a; 


Rnnk 


WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 


WHAT  IS  AMEEICA? 


BY 
EDWARD  ALSWORTH  ROSS,  PH.D.,  LL.D. 

Professor  of  Sociology,  University  of  Wisconsin. 

Author  of  "Social  Control,"  "Social  Psychology,"  "The 

Changing  Chinese,"  "Changing  America," 

"Russia  in  Upheaval,"  etc. 


ILLUSTRATED  WITH  TWENTY-TWO 
MAPS  AND  DIAGRAMS 


NEW  YORK 
THE  CENTURY  CO. 
1919 


Copyright,  1919,  by 
THE  CENTUEY  Co. 

Published,  June,  1919 


SRLF 
YRL 


TO 

MY  FRIEND 
THOMAS  NIXON  CARVER 

CHAMPION  AND  SAMPLE  OF  VIRILE, 

STURDY  AMERICANISM 
THIS  BOOK  IS  DEDICATED 


FOKEWOKD 

Our  society  is  developing  as  the  Fathers 
neither  foresaw  nor  intended.  Its  path  is  de- 
termined chiefly  by  the  instincts  of  multitudes 
— as  in  the  westward  movement  and  European 
immigration — by  our  inherited  institutions,  and 
by  the  remoter  effects  of  mechanical  inventions. 
In  the  course  of  this  development  strain  is  pro- 
duced on  a  large  scale.  Accordingly,  the  collec- 
tive will  comes  into  action  with  means  of  relief, 
but  it  trails  along  well  in  the  rear  of  social  evolu- 
tion. Always  there  are  strains  not  yet  relieved, 
and,  the  more  rapidly  society  evolves,  the  more 
of  these  strains  there  are.  Since  we  are  apt 
to  blame  some  one  for  these  strains  communi- 
cated to  us  through  others,  it  ought  to  help  us 
keep  our  tempers  if  we  recognize  that  for  much 
suffering  no  one  is  to  blame.  You  cannot  lay 
it  to  persons,  it  is  simply  a  by-product  of  social 
evolution.  Of  course  we  should  seek  out  a 
remedy,  but,  in  the  meantime,  we  need  not  begin 

vii 


viii  FOREWORD 

to  quarrel  among  ourselves  and  hate  one  an- 
other. 

The  bulk  of  Americans  well  understand  this. 
There  are  some  who  will  do  nothing  about  the 
suffering  in  the  wake  of  social  evolution,  lest 
their  profits  be  disturbed.  There  are  others 
who  hold  certain  individuals  responsible  for  this 
suffering  and  would  wreck  society  in  order  to 
get  at  them.  Between  these  are  the  steady-go- 
ing millions  who,  without  losing  their  tempers, 
seek  patiently  for  remedies.  They  have  con- 
tended with  a  long  series  of  grave  problems, 
yet  have  not  turned  bitter.  They  exhibit  that 
"firm  adherence  to  justice,  moderation,  tem- 
perance, frugality,  and  virtue"  without  which, 
according  to  the  Virginia  Bill  of  Rights  of  1776, 
"no  free  government,  or  the  blessings  of  lib- 
erty, can  be  preserved  to  any  people." 

It  is  to  vindicate  and  commend  this  "virtuous 
democracy ' '  that  I  offer  this  little  book. 

EDWARD  ALSWOBTH  Ross, 
Madison,  Wisconsin. 

May,  1919. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  THE  MAKE-UP  OF  THE  PEOPLE  ....      3 

II  MAKING  A  LIVING      .     .    „     .     .     .     .     25 

III  MARRIAGE  AND  THE  FAMILY 35 

IV  GOVERNMENT 44 

V    EDUCATION      . 58 

VI    RURAL  AMERICA 72 

VII    URBAN  AMERICA  .     .     .     .    -.     .     .     .86 

VIII    BUSINESS 98 

IX    LABOR  ...........  106 

X    DEMOCRACY     ..........  116 

APPENDIX  A   .     .     .     .     K     .     .     .     .  129 

APPENDIX  B   .  .  135 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Proportion  of  total  population  formed  by  each  na- 
tionality—1790    5 

Distribution  of  native  white  stock  in  the  United 
States— 1910 8 

Distribution  of  Irish  and  natives  of  Irish  Parent- 
age—1910       11 

Distribution  of  Germans  and  natives  of  German 

Parentage — 1910       .      .      .     .     .     .     .     .     14 

Distribution    of    Scandinavians   and   natives   of 

Scandinavian  Parentage — 1910      ....     17 

Distribution  of  Italians  and  natives  of  Italian 

Parentage— 1910 18 

The  Distribution  of  Foreign  Stock  in  the  United 

States— 1910 21 

Distribution    of    Foreign-Born    Whites    in    the 
United  States— 1910 22 

Agricultural  Provinces 31 

Change  in  average  size  of  families — 1790  to  1900  40 

The  United  States— 1790 46 

The  original  thirteen  states  and  acquisitions  .      .  49 

National  forests 51 

Lynchings  in  the  United  States,  1885-1915  .      .  54 

Percentage  of  children  of  school  age  enrolled  in 

school  .     .  59 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Progress  of  elementary  grade  enrollment  for  eight 
years 61 

Comparative  growth  in  number  of  private  and 

public  high  schools  .      ........     65 

Gifts  and  bequests  to  education 69 

Farm  property  value 77 

Farm  tenure    .     .     . 79 

Per  cent,  of  total  population  of  United  States  in 

cities  of  8,000  population  and  over  ...     85 

Mayor,  Commission  and  City  Manager  plans  of 
government 91 


WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 


WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   MAKE-UP   OF   THE   PEOPLE 

WHAT  distinguishes  the  thirteen  English 
colonies  planted  in  North  America  from 
most  colonies  is  that  a  third  or  more  of  the 
original  settlers  of  the  former  left  the  Old 
World  in  order  to  escape  from  some  form  of 
religious  or  political  oppression.  This  made  the 
American  people  rich  in  precious  human  strains 
which  have  never  run  out.  Probably  even  now 
a  fourth  part  of  their  blood  comes  from  the 
twenty  thousand  English  Puritans  who  came  to 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  between  1618 
and  1640.  It  endowed  them  also  with  traditions 
of  liberty  and  idealism  which  continually  rise 
to  the  surface  to  confound  those  who  sneer  at 
Americans  as  "dollar-hunters." 

In  the  seventeeth  century  the  chief  non-Eng- 
lish strains  woven  into  the  white  population  of 
the  colonies  were  the  Dutch,  who  settled  New 

3 


4  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

Netherland,  which  later  became  the  colony  of 
New  York,  and  a  few  thousand  splendid  French 
Huguenots.  In  the  eighteenth  century  came 
great  numbers  of  Scotch,  of  Irish  Presbyterians 
from  the  province  of  Ulster,  and  of  Germans 
from  the  ravaged  lands  on  the  upper  Ehine. 
These  last  settled  in  Pennsylvania  and  became 
the  ancestors  of  those  whom  we  call  the  "  Penn- 
sylvania Dutch. '  '  At  the  time  of  the  first  cen- 
sus, in  1790,  the  young  nation  had  less  than 
three  million  whites,  of  whom,  to  judge  by  fam- 
ily names,  83.5  per  cent,  were  of  English  stock; 
6.7  per  cent.  Scotch;  5.6  per  cent.  German;  2 
per  cent.  Dutch ;  1.6  per  cent.  Irish,  and  0.5  per 
cent.  French. 

Meanwhile  the  conditions  were  converting 
this  mixture  of  unlike  elements  into  a  new 
people.  Of  every  generation  some  left  the  fam- 
ily roof-tree  to  go  out  and  settle  in  the  roomy 
West.  Generally  these  wanderers  were  bigger 
and  stronger  of  body  than  those  who  stayed 
behind.  In  the  Civil  War  the  recruits  from 
interior  states  were  found  to  be  taller  and 
heavier  than  the  recruits  from  seaboard  states. 
Of  course  the  sons  of  the  old  distinguished  fam- 
ilies did  not  migrate,  but,  in  general,  those  who 
went  west  must  have  excelled  in  energy  and 


Proportion  of  total  population  formed  by  each  nationality :  1790 


6  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

venturesomeness  their  kinsmen  who  stayed 
where  they  were  born.  It  was  the  trout  rather 
than  the  carp  that  left  the  pool  in  order  to  get 
into  the  swift  water. 

Now,  the  wanderers  "out  West"  multiplied 
faster  than  the  stay-at-homes.  With  land 
aplenty  and  prospects  bright,  they  married 
earlier  and  they  raised  bigger  families.  Small 
wonder,  then,  that  for  a  hundred  years,  in  the 
population  of  our  younger  states,  the  propor- 
tion of  children  has  been  from  thirty  to  a  hun- 
dred per  cent,  greater  than  in  the  older  states. 
In  this  simple,  natural  way  the  bold  and  push- 
ful gained  in  numbers  on  the  timid,  inert  sort 
and  came  to  constitute  an  ever-larger  part  of 
the  American  people. 

No  one  maintains  that  the  American  breed 
surpasses  the  mother  stocks  overseas  in  brain- 
power or  sensibility;  but  for  fifty  years  all 
European  visitors  have  been  struck  by  the  won- 
derful energy  and  enterprise  of  the  Americans. 
We  see  now  that  there  is  nothing  strange  in 
this,  for  these  are  just  the  qualities  which  are 
made  more  abundant  as  the  wilderness  is  set- 
tled. Here  is  the  secret  of  the  large  number  of 
forceful  men  in  the  ordinary  American  commu- 
nity. Here,  too,  is  the  explanation  of  the  high- 


THE  MAKE-UP  OF  THE  PEOPLE       7 

pressure,  get-there-at-any-cost  American  spirit, 
which  leaves  in  its  wake  'achievement  and  pros- 
perity— also  neurasthenia,  heart  failure,  and 
broken  commandments ! 

In  sharp  contrast  with  these  whites  are  the 
American  negroes,  descended  from  enslaved 
Africans.  They  are  now  but  a  tenth  of  the 
population,  whereas  a  century  ago  they  were 
not  fewer  than  a  fifth.  Owing  to  the  great  in- 
pouring  from  Europe,  the  whites  have  out- 
stripped the  blacks  in  rate  of  growth,  but  let 
no  one  suppose  the  negro  element  here  is  at  a 
standstill.  It  numbers  now  ten  million  souls, 
having  more  than  doubled  since  the  abolition 
of  slavery  in  1863.  The  great  bulk  of  negroes 
are  in  the  South,  for  in  the  North  the  climate 
does  not  suit  them  and  they  tend  to  die  out. 
Four  fifths  of  them  are  in  the  " Black  Belt," 
a  chain  of  counties  reaching  from  Virginia  to 
Texas,  in  which  the  blacks  outnumber  the 
whites.  In  one  county  in  Mississippi  the  ne- 
groes are  six  to  one  white,  in  another  ten  to  one. 
In  many  counties  of  the  Black  Belt  three  fourths 
of  the  population  are  negroes.  When  the  whites 
form  such  a  small  minority,  it  is  very  hard  for 
them  to  maintain  the  standards  of  the  white 
man's  civilization. 


THE  MAKE-UP  OF  THE  PEOPLE   9 

Crime  and  pauperism  are  many  times  greater 
among  the  negroes  than  among  the  whites  and 
at  least  half  the  negroes  live  under  bad  condi- 
tions. Their  death-rate  is  from  fifty  to  a  hun- 
dred per  cent,  higher  than  that  of  the  whites 
about  them.  Now  that  they  are  free,  the  coarse 
and  stupid  ones  are  at  liberty  to  make  more 
mistakes  and  do  themselves  more  harm  than 
ever  they  could  as  slaves.  They  are  rapidly 
being  sifted,  and  in  great  numbers  those  ne- 
groes who  cannot  meet  the  requirements  and 
resist  the  vices  of  our  civilization  are  dying  off. 
Meanwhile  the  relations  between  many  white 
men  and  " colored"  women  cause  white  blood 
to  take  the  place  of  negro  blood  in  a  part  of 
each  generation.  Already  from  a  third  to  a 
half  of  the  "  negroes "  show  the  presence  of 
some  white  blood.  From  these  half -blacks  and 
quarter-blacks  come  the  "  negroes "  that  make 
a  name  for  themselves  and  that  resent  most 
bitterly  every  form  of  race  discrimination. 

The  grant  of  the  suffrage  (1870)  to  two  mil- 
lion ex-slaves  marked  the  high  tide  of  American 
faith  in  the  magical  virtue  of  the  ballot.  The 
extravagance  and  corruption  of  the  transient 
negro  domination  in  the  South,  the  ' i  reconstruc- 
tion" period,  presented  an  object-lesson  in  the 


10  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

perils  of  a  formula.  Gradually  the  North  came 
to  accept  the  Southerner's  plea  for  white  su- 
premacy and  for  about  twenty  years  the  ballot 
has  been  denied  the  illiterate  negroes  of  the 
South. 

Schooling,  too,  has  failed  to  bring  the  results 
hoped  for.  Slowly  it  has  come  to  be  perceived 
that  the  adjustment  of  the  negroes  to  civiliza- 
tion will  be  a  long  process,  for  the  bulk  of  them 
still  behave  much  as  a  ' '  nature ' '  people.  When 
they  get  up,  they  will  mount  not  so  much  by  the 
upper  rungs  of  the  white  man 's  ladder — science 
and  literature — as  by  the  lower  rungs — skill  and 
thrift.  The  negro  schools  which  have  done  the 
most  good  have  been  those,  like  Hampton  and 
Tuskegee,  which  train  for  industry.  As  the 
black  man  becomes  a  deft,  dependable  worker, 
accumulates  property,  and  lives  up  to  the  white 
man's  standards,  the  better  whites  respect  him 
and  insist  that  he  shall  have  a  ''square  deal.'* 
The  negroes  excite  less  antipathy  than  formerly, 
and  less  sympathy.  However,  the  number  of 
Southern  whites  resolved  to  see  justice  done 
them  grows  steadily. 

From  the  outbreak  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion until  the  fourth  decade  of  the  nineteenth 


*      0       I 


12  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

century  there  was  a  lull  in  .immigration  from 
Europe.  During  these  sixty  years  powerful 
assimilative  forces  were  rapidly  molding  the 
motley  population  of  the  former  colonies  into 
a  nation.  In  the  roomy,  hopeful  West,  men 
from  every  part  of  the  East  were  blending  into 
a  common  American  type.  Then  came  an  epoch 
of  vast  immigration  which  largely  undid  the 
work  of  the  nationalizing  forces  'and  brought 
upon  us  a  heterogeneity  like  that  of  the  period 
1750-1775. 

The  first  vast  wave  was  the  Celtic  Irisji,  of 
J  whom  at  least  four  and__a_half  mjjlifms^  have 
come  over,  more  than  the  present  population  of 
the  Green  Isle!  The  time  of  famine  and  re- 
bellion in  Ireland,  1846-55,  saw  the  crest  of  the 
wave,  but  there  was  another  heavy  influx  after 
the  troubles  of  1880-81.  Since  the  dawn  in  Ire- 
land of  the  better  day  brought  by  small  fam- 
ilies, land  reform,  and  the  cooperative  move- 
ment, the  stream  from  there  has  narrowed  to  a 
trickle. 

The  Irish  came  here  from  nearly  the  worst 
possible  economic  conditions.  The  system  they 
had  been  reared  under  did  not  foster  foresight 
and  thrift,  so  that  many  of  the  Irish  immigrants 
never  got  upon  a  farm,  but  stagnated  in  cities 


THE  MAKE-UP  OF  THE  PEOPLE     13 

and  crowded  into  the  pick-and-shovel  brigade.^ 
Forty  years  ago  it  was  as  certain  that  a  navvy 
would  be  an  Irishman  as  it  is  to-day  that  he 
will  be  an  Italian.  In  American  almshouses 
and  slums  they  have  been  far  more  numerous 
than  any  other  nationality. 

Nevertheless,  the  rocketlike  rise  of  the  chil- 
dren and  grandchildren  of  Hibernian  immi- 
grants proves  how  much  ability  was  smothered 
in  the  humble  classes  of  the  Old  World  from 
sheer  lack  of  opportunity.  They  shine  at  the"! 
bar,  in  teaching,  in  journalism,  on  the  stage,  in  ' 
public  life,  and  in  all  manner  of  executive  posi- 
tions. Their  great  gift  is  the  knack  of  handling1  y 
nien.  Thanks  to  this  and  to  their  clannishness, 
the  Irish  captured  control  of  the  great  Northern 
cities  a  generation  ago  and,  despite  their  own 
fine  personal  qualities,  soon  gave  these  cities  the 
reputation  of  being  the  worst-governed  ones  in 
the  civilized  world.  There  are,  however,  no  bet- 
ter fighters  for  higher  civic  ideals  than  some  of 
the  third-generation  Irish. 

The  German  tide  of  immigration  swelled  after 
the  German  political  reaction  from  1848  and 
flowed  strong  until  about  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago.  Altogether,  not  less  than  seven  millions 
of  Germans  have  sought  the  New  World  anq 


THE  MAKE-UP  OF  THE  PEOPLE     15 

German  blood  can  hardly  be  less  than  a  fourth 
part  of  the  blood  of  white  Americans.  This 
infusion  alone  probably  equals  all  the  Spanish 
and  Portuguese  blood  there  is  in  South  America. 

The  Germans  came  to  us  with  the  economic 
virtues  and  they  have  done  well  for  themselves. 
They  got  their  feet  upon  the  soil  and  had  some- 
thing to  teach  their  American  neighbors  in  the 
way  of  good  farming.  They  abound  in  the 
skilled  occupations  and  had  much  to  do  with 
starting  manufactures  in  the  United  States. 
They  are  as  apt  for  dealing  with  things  as  are 
the  Irish  for  dealing  with  folks. 

The  big  red  barns  of  the  American  rural 
scene,  the  canvas-covered  wagons  of  the  West- 
ern pioneers,  and  the  county  or  state  agricul- 
tural fair — these  came  from  the  Pennsylvania       .. 
Germans.     The  later  Germans  influenced  Amer^J 
icans  to  care  for  beer,  gymnastics,  sedentary 
recreation,  music,  competency  in  civil  servants,  I 

•Mf 

and  intellectual  liberty.  But  the  dream  of 
creating  a  *  *  New  Germany ' '  in  the  United  States 
has  not  been  realized  and,  since  the  subsidence 
of  the  Teutonic  freshet,  Deutschtum  is  on  the 
wane.  The  vast  Pan-German  propaganda  for 
twenty  years  before  the  war  had  some  effect; 
but,  when  the  test  came,  the  "  German- Ameri- 


16  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

cans"  generally  proved  loyal  to  their  adopted 
country. 

Scandinavian  immigration  flowed  strong 
for  the  half -century  after  the  close  of  the  Civil 
War  and  brought  in  altogether  twq  million 
jsouls^  Indeed,  a  quarter  of  all  the  Scandi- 
navian blood  in  the  world  is  over  here.  The 
Scandinavian  immigrants  have  been  attracted 
most  by  the  climate  and  nature  of  the  North- 
west, stretching  from  Lake  Michigan  to  Puget 
Sound.  They  are  found  on  farms  and  in  the 
outdoor  occupations  characteristic  of  the  old 
country.  They  assimilate  readily,  for  no  immi- 
grants respond  more  heartily  than  they  to  the 
American  gospel  of  personal  independence, 
good  morals,  and  democracy.  They  furnish  few 
leaders  but  many  excellent  citizens. 

These  three  nationalities  make  the  backbone 
of  the  old  immigration.  But  about  twenty-five 
years  ago  occurred  a  great  shift  in  the  sources 
of  immigration.  The  flow  from  Northern  and 
Northwestern  Europe  ran  low,  while  the  stream 
from  Southern  and  Southeastern  Europe  be- 
came a  flood.  A  million_^and  a  hall  Italians, 
chiefly  from  the  less  progressive  southern  half 
of  the  Italian  peninsula,  perhaps  two  and  a 
half  million  Slavs — Poles,  Bohemians/STovaEs, 


THE  MAKE-UP  OF  THE  PEOPLE     19 

Ruthenians,  Serbs,  and  Bulgars, — and  two  mil- 
lion East-European  Jews  have  settled  among  us. 
Besides  these,  there  are  large  numbers  of  Mag- 
yars, Portuguese,  Greeks,  and  peoples  from  the 
former  Turkish  Empire. 

The  result  was  that  before  the  war  a  third 
of  our  people  were  of  foreign  parentage,  while 
the  foreign-born  constituted  a  sixth  of  all  the 
adults  in  the  country.  Never  before  had  the 
foreign-born  and  their  children  formed  so  large 
a  proportion  of  the  American  people.  In  De- 
troit and  Cleveland  but  one  man  out  of  five  had 
parents  born  in  this  country;  in  Chicago  and 
New  York,  one  out  of  six ;  in  Milwaukee,  one  out 
of  seven;  and  in  Fall  Eiver,  Mass.,  one  out  of 
nine! 

The  absorption  of  strangers  in  such  numbers  / 
has  eff ects  both  good  and  bad.  It  keeps  society 
youthful,  an  arena  of  competition  among  indi- 
viduals instead  of  among  families.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  fills  the  country  too  quickly, 
floods  the  unskilled  occupations,  and  lowers  the 
wages  and  standard  of  living  of  those  already 
here,  so  far  as  they  are  brought  into  competition 
with  the  new-comers,  It  is  bad  for  politics  be- 
cause it  injects  a  lot  of  old-fashioned  questions 
which  were  settled  long  ago  in  this  country — 


20  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

such  as  the  relation  of  the  church  to  the  state, 
of  the  church  to  the  school,  of  the  state  to  the 
child,  etc.  We  are  forced  to  thresh  over  this 
old  straw,  when  we  ought  to  be  thinking  of  such 
questions  as  the  protection  of  labor,  the  control 
of  monopoly,  and  the  conservation  of  natural 
resources. 

•^ 

The  new-comers  from  Europe  have  in  no  way 
been  discriminated  against.  State  laws  limit- 
ing the  proportion  of  aliens  who  may  be  em- 
ployed on  public  work  have  been  thrown  out 
by  the  courts.  When  the  immigrant  has  made 
good,  he  is  welcomed  into  the  fraternity  of  suc- 
cess and  his  American  friends  will  tell  with 
gusto  how,  a  few  years  ago,  he  landed  from  the 
steerage  without  a  dollar.  Good  will  is  wonder- 
fully common  and  the  immigrant  who  shows 
unusual  aspirations  finds  friends  at  every  turn. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  easy  to  protect 
effectively  the  non-English  speaking  immi- 
grants, and  some  of  them  see  little  but  the  seamy 
side  of  America  during  their  "green"  years. 
After  experiencing  the  misrepresentation,  graft, 
and  dishonesty  of  private  employment  bureaus, 
the  extortions  of  foremen  under  the  guise  of 
"payment  for  the  job"  or  "interpreter's  fee," 
and  the  brutal  handling  by  the  "guards"  hired 


THE  MAKE-UP  OF  THE  PEOPLE     23 

by  employers  in  out-of-the-way  places  to  break 
strikes,  the  immigrant  may  conclude,  "Ameri- 
can democracy  is  a  sham. ' '  Happily,  in  recent 
years  the  alien  has  more  friends  to  stand  up 
for  him,  so  that  nowadays  his  ignorance  is  less 
abused. 

The  war  caused  us  to  realize  that,  in  expect- 
ing that  all  the  immigrants  would  of  themselves 
come  to  understand  what  we  are  trying  to  do 
in  this  country,  we  expected  too  much.  We 
found  that  many  of  the  foreign-born  live  in 
colonies  by  themselves,  speak  and  read  the  lan- 
guage of  their  mother-land,  and  have  no  con- 
cern for  American  institutions.  Since  the  only 
Americans  they  come  in  contact  with  are  those 
who  are  trying  to  make  money  out  of  them, 
they  get  the  impression  that  Americans  care 
only  for  the  dollar. 

If  the  Americans  wanted  a  governing  class  in 
this  country,  they  would  be  glad  to  have  the 
foreign-born  live  to  themselves.  But  such  is 
not  their  aim.  It  is  the  American  idea  that  pub- 
lic affairs  should  be  the  concern  of  all.  Hence, 
an  "Americanization"  movement  has  sprung 
up,  the  aim  of  which  is  to  enlist  the  good  will 
and  help  of  the  foreign-born  on  behalf  of  the 
experiment  in  democracy  we  have  embarked  on. 


24  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

The  thought  is  that  if  every  man  who  comes 
here  is  made  to  feel  himself  "one  of  the  family," 
we  shall  come  so  much  the  nearer  to  President 
Lincoln's  ideal  of  "government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people,  for  the  people." 


CHAPTER  II 

MAKING  A  LIVING 

NO  state  in  the  Union  can  interfere  with 
commerce  among  the  states.  The  result 
is  that  the  economic  life  of  the  nation  develops 
almost  as  if  state  lines  did  not  exist.  The  vast 
area  thus  dedicated  to  free  trade  is  so  varied 
in  climate  and  natural  resources  that  it  is  vir- 
tually a  world  in  itself.  For  this  reason  the  in- 
ternal trade  of  the  United  States  completely 
overshadows  its  foreign  trade  in  volume  and  im- 
portance, one  result  being  that  high  duties  on 
foreign  goods  imported  have  never  cut  off  the 
consuming  public  from  a  very  important  or  nec- 
essary market. 

"  Yankee  ingenuity "  is  a  byword.  No  doubt 
the  Americans  were  as  competent  as  any  other 
people  to  provide  themselves  with  manufac- 
tured goods.  But  factories  were  slow  in  com- 
ing, because  for  a  hundred  years  the  frontier 
vied  with  the  factories  in  attracting  the  over- 

25 


26  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

flow  of  population  from  the  farms.  In  other 
words,  the  lure  of  Western  land  retarded  the 
growth  of  American  manufactures.  It  was 
hard,  too,  for  young  enterprises  of  this  kind  to 
stand  up  under  the  practice  of  "dumping"  by 
the  older  industries  across  the  sea.  Had  noth- 
ing been  done  about  it,  it  is  likely  that  during  its 
era  of  settlement  the  United  States  would  have 
remained  chiefly  a  producer  of  food  and  raw 
materials,  exchanging  its  surplus  for  the  prod- 
ucts of  Old- World  factories.  It  was  the  unwill- 
ingness of  the  people  to  abide  in  such  depend- 
ence on  foreign  sources  of  supply,  and  their  de- 
sire for  a  symmetrical  economic  development 
of  the  nation,  which  prompted  the  policy  of  fos- 
tering home  industries  by  a  protective  tariff. 
Owing  to  its  specialization  on  cotton-growing, 
and  to  the  unfitness  of  negroes  as  mill-hands, 
the  South  has  been  tardy  in  developing  manu- 
factures, and  up  to  about  1900  set  its  face  like 
flint  against  the  high-tariff  policy. 

The  one  insatiable  need  of  the  country  has 
been  for  transportation.  Hence,  the  conquest 
of  space  is  the  epic  exploit  in  our  economic  his- 
tory. In  a  couple  of  lifetimes  the  Americans 
have  had  to  equip  a  territory  as  big  as  all 
Europe,  outside  of  Russia,  with  highways  such 


MAKING  A  LIVING  27 

as  the  Old  World  was  centuries  in  building. 
So  long  as  the  roads  were  left  to  local  govern- 
ment, the  means  of  communication  lagged  far 
behind  everything  else.  A  century  ago  one 
spent  a  week  in  going  from  New  York  to  Bos- 
ton by  stage.  American  roads  were  execrated 
by  every  visiting  European.  No  inland  arteries 
of  commerce  came  into  existence  until  the 
states,  and  even  the  nation,  built  highways  to 
connect  interior  with  seaboard.  Then  came  a 
furor  over  canal-cutting,  and  by  1825  the  Erie 
Canal  linked  the  Great  Lakes  with  the  Hudson 
Kiver. 

As  the  people  spread  west  of  the  Alleghany 
Mountains,  leaving  behind  the  sea  and  the 
coastal  rivers,  they  came  to  be  more  dependent 
on  land-carriage.  It  is  only  the  steam  railway 
that  makes  the  Mississippi  Valley  the  great 
hearth  of  the  American  nation.  Without  it  we 
might  have  now  but  a  third  of  our  present  popu- 
lation and  a  fifth  of  our  present  wealth.  Un- 
like the  steamboat,  invented  in  1807  by  an 
American,  the  railway  was  an  English  inven- 
tion, but  no  people  has  used  it  so  lavishly  as 
the  Americans.  About  1900,  when  its  railway  / 
net  was  fairly  complete,  the  country  had  two  * 
fifths  of  the  railway  mileage  of  the  globe.  What 


28 

the  sea  means  to  the  British  Empire  the  rail- 
ways mean  to  the  United  States. 

All  these  iron-ways  were  provided  by  private 
companies  from  commercial  motives.  Indeed, 
during  the  period  1830-1890  the  state  almost 
forgot  its  proverbial  duty  to  create  means  of 
communication.  The  ' '  good-roads ' '  movement, 
which  has  achieved  wonders,  started  only  thirty 
years  ago.  At  first  no  one  foresaw  what  for- 
tunes would  be  made  in  providing  transporta- 
tion, and  great  inducements  were  necessary  to 
coax  sufficient  capital  into  railway-building.  So 
much  did  local  prosperity  wait  on  the  iron  horse 
that  for  a  generation  communities  vied  with 
one  another  in  tempting  railway  promoters. 
The  states,  and  finally  the  nation  itself,  offered 
princely  grants  of  wild  land  in  aid  of  railroad- 
building  and  at  that  time  little  was  said  as  to 
the  terms  on  which  the  companies  should  serve 
the  public. 

In  the  period  1850-1873  railroads  were  built 
as  never  before,  but  the  people's  eagerness 
coupled  with  the  let-alone  policy  of  the  state 
with  respect  to  the  management  of  the  compan- 
ies resulted  in  great  abuses.  Share  capital 
was  issued  far  in  excess  of  the  money  actually 
put  into  the  roads.  Generally  it  was  money 


MAKING  A  LIVING  29 

from  the  sale  of  'bonds  that  built  the  road.  The 
stocks  were  mostly  " water,"  that  is,  repre- 
sented nothing  paid  in.  Yet,  since  the  stock- 
holders have  the  voting  power,  the  control  of 
the  roads  was  not  in  the  hands  of  those  who 
furnished  the  capital.  Arrogant  "  railroad 
kings"  embroiled  their  roads  in  ruinous  rate 
"wars."  The  sum  total  which  the  carrying 
companies  charged  the  public  for  their  services 
was  not  exorbitant,  but  their  arbitrary  treat- 
ment of  businesses  and  communities  made  mock 
of  the  democratic  principle,  ' '  a  fair  field  and  no 
favors."  In  the  words  of  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  himself  a  railway  president,  the  man- 
agers had  "got  it  into  their  heads  that  they 
were  not  bound  to  furnish  equal  facilities  to  all, 
and,  indeed,  that  it  was  in  the  last  degree  absurd 
and  unreasonable  to  expect  them  to  do  so." 

The  movement  to  make  the  railroads  servants 
rather  than  masters  of  the  nation's  commerce 
began  about  forty-five  years  ago  among  the 
farmers  of  the  Middle  West,  whose  produce 
had  to  be  carried  a  long  way  to  market.  The 
East,  where  the  farmers  were  near  to  their 
market  and  where  investors  in  railway  securi- 
ties had  much  influence,  was  much  slower  to  un- 
dertake the  policy  of  regulation.  At  first  the 


30  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

western  states  limited  railway  charges  by  law. 
After  this  method  proved  unsatisfactory  state 
boards,  known  as  "railroad  commissions," 
were  created  to  impose  a  flexible  continuous 
regulation.  In  1887  a  national  board,  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  was  set  up 
in  Washington  to  look  after  the  charges  on  the 
traffic  between  the  states.  Only  within  the  last 
decade  has  public  regulation  become  an  unes- 
capable  condition,  so  that  the  railways  are  no 
longer  at  liberty  to  foster  monopolies  and 
" trusts"  by  their  favors  to  big  shippers  and  to 
concerns  in  which  railway  financiers  and  man- 
agers are  interested. 

Everything  connected  with  American  trans- 
portation— locomotives,  cars,  trains,  terminals, 
volume  of  traffic,  length  of  haul — is  titanic. 
The  carriage  of  goods  is  therefore  cheaper  here 
than  anywhere  else  in  the  world  save  British 
India.  Mountains  of  freight  are  moved  at  an 
average  cost  of  less  than  half  a  cent  a  ton-mile. 
For  the  more  valuable  goods  distance  has  ceased 
to  matter  so  far  as  the  American  market  is 
concerned,  while  for  the  bulkier  wares  it  is  of 
dwindling  significance.  As  a  result,  the  produc- 
tion of  each  thing  is  gradually  concentrating 
in  just  that  part  of  the  country  which  is  best 


32  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

suited  to  it.  Agriculture  specializes  into  a 
''corn  belt,"  a  "cotton  belt,"  a  "winter-wheat 
belt, "  a  "  spring-wheat  belt, ' '  and  year  by  year 
the  outline  of  these  areas  becomes  more  clear 
and  definite.  Light  stuff,  like  fruit  and  dairy 
products,  more  and  more  comes  only  from  re- 
gions where  climate  and  soil  are  just  right. 
Thus  half  the  cheese  goes  out  from  southern 
Wisconsin,  oranges  spread  everywhere  from 
two  districts —  southern  California  and  Florida 
— grapes  radiate  from  the  vicinity  of  Lake 
Erie  or  from  California,  table  apples  from  New 
York  or  from  the  valleys  of  the  Pacific  North- 
west. Even  the  raising  of  strawberries,  mel- 
ons, peaches,  celery,  and  such  like  for  the  mar- 
ket is  concentrating  in  a  few  specially  favored 
spots. 

The  swelling  traffic  that  ignores  state  bound- 
aries and  knits  all  parts  of  the  land  into  econo- 
mic interdependence  makes  the  people  feel 
themselves  a  nation.  No  calamity  can  befall 
the  salmon-canners  on  the  Columbia  River,  the 
oystermen  of  Chesapeake  Bay,  the  peach- 
growers  of  the  Ozark  Mountains,  the  cane- 
planters  of  Louisiana,  the  beet-root  cultivators 
of  the  Middle  West,  the  millers  of  Minneapolis, 
the  meat-packers  of  Chicago,  the  hard-coal 


MAKING  A  LIVING  33 

miners  of  eastern  Pennsylvania,  the  cotton- 
spinners  of  New  England  or  the  furniture-mak- 
ers of  Michigan  without  finally  hurting  nearly 
every  family  in  the  United  States.  Thus  in 
spite  of  its  bigness,  in  spite  of  its  embracing 
so  immense  a  variety  of  soil  and  climate,  the 
country  is  being  made  by  the  railroads  into  a 
single  economic  system.  Matters  which  it  was 
intended  that  the  states  individually  should  look 
after  have  to  be  attended  to  by  the  national  gov- 
ernment and  the  people  are  coming  to  be  unified 
almost  as  the  people  in  small  countries  like 
England  and  France  are  unified. 

Regional  specialization  puts  an  end  to  that 
sameness  of  type  which  the  European  traveler 
in  America  used  to  complain  of.  In  fact,  a 
great  variety  of  strongly  marked  local  types  has 
come  into  existence.  The  orange-growers  about 
Los  Angeles  doubtless  include  more  retired 
clergymen  and  professors  than  any  horticultural 
group  in  the  world.  The  breeders  of  fine  horses 
in  the  Blue-Grass  Eegion  of  Kentucky  are 
famed  for  geniality  and  open-handedness.  The 
compact  settlements  of  melon-growers  in  the 
irrigated  valleys  of  Colorado  show  nothing  of 
the  proverbial  individualism  of  the  American 
farmer.  Problems  of  marketing  have  made  the 


34  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

apple-growers  of  the  Pacific  Northwest  shrewd 
and  well-organized  business  men.  The  Kansas 
grain-farmer  has  little  in  common  with  the  un- 
specialized  farmer  of  Vermont.  The  lumber- 
jacks of  the  fir  forests  about  Puget  Sound  are 
very  different  men  from  those  who  labor  in  the 
pine  woods  of  Maine  or  gather  turpentine  in 
the  forests  of  North  Carolina.  The  cattle 
ranches  of  the  grazing  West  yield  the  most 
romantic  American  figure  since  the  Indian- 
fighter,  viz.,  the  cow-boy.  But  while  the  cheap 
carriage  of  products  thus  gives  birth  to  local 
types,  the  cheap  carriage  of  national  news- 
papers, magazines,  and  film  reels,  of  "  stump 
speakers,"  lecturers,  and  theatrical  troupes, 
unites  them  all  with  a  cement  of  common  im- 
pressions and  ideas. 


MARRIAGE   AND    THE    FAMILY 

SO  much  is  said  about  self-supporting  women 
and  the  postponement  of  marriage  that  to 
most  people  it  comes  as  a  pleasant  surprise  to 
learn  that  Americans  are,  in  fact,  one  of  the 
most  married  peoples  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 
More  of  them  are  yoked  together  than  in  any 
European  country  west  of  Hungary.  Only  the 
Magyars  and  the  Slavs  take  more  heartily  to 
matrimony.  Of  our  whites  of  native  parent- 
age, only  one  woman  in  twelve  and  one  man 
in  eleven  reaches  middle  age  without  having 
taken  a  spouse.  The  negroes  and  the  foreign- 
born  are  slightly  more  matrimonial,  the  natives 
of  foreign  parentage  less  so. 

So  far  as  our  own  recent  national  experience 
goes,  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  the  richness 
of  interest  in  modern  life  dulls  the  charm  of  sex. 
In  1890  out  of  a  thousand  American  men,  417 
were  single;  in  1910  only  387.  In  1890  out  of 
a  thousand  American  women  318  were  single; 

35 


36  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

in  1910  only  297.  Contrary  to  the  general  im- 
pression, marriage  now  occurs  earlier  than  it 
did  a  generation  ago.  Every  census  since,  in 
1890,  we  began  to  inquire  into  conjugal  condi- 
tions reveals  more  people  wedded  before  they 
are  twenty  years  old,  more  wedded  before  they 
are  twenty-five.  Nor  is  this  fondness  for  mar- 
riage less  marked  among  the  native  stock  than 
among  the  foreign  stock. 

This  happy  showing  is,  in  part,  due  to  the 
comparative  ease  of  earning  a  living  here,  which 
enables  most  people  to  marry  as  soon  as  they 
are  ready  to  "settle  down."  Then,  social  con- 
ditions are  favorable  to  marriage.  No  class  of 
people  find  it  more  difficult  to  achieve  a  family 
life  of  their  own  than  servants,  and  in  the  Amer- 
ican population  servants  are  by  no  means  so 
numerous  as  they  are  in  Europe.  For  example, 
there  are  more  professors  in  the  United  States 
than  there  are  butlers ;  more  artists  than  there 
are  coachmen ;  nearly  as  many  professional  in- 
ventors as  there  are  valets ;  three  times  as  many 
sculptors  as  there  are  footmen ;  and  fifty  times 
as  many  librarians  as  there  are  gamekeepers ! 
In  fact,  the  whole  corps  of  men-servants  re- 
ported is  just  about  equal  in  number  to  that 
of  architects,  chemists,  and  engineers  combined. 


MARRIAGE  AND  THE  FAMILY      37 

As  for  the  million  women-servants  in  this  coun- 
try, they  are  largely  young  women  most  of 
whom  will  marry  in  due  time.  They  are,  in- 
deed, by  no  means  so  generally  foredoomed  to 
celibacy  as  the  half-million  women  school- 
teachers. 

Formerly  there  were  many  things  to  keep  the 
girls  busy  in  the  home.  They  spun,  wove, 
knitted,  made  garments,  quilted,  molded  candles, 
made  soap,  pickled  meat,  cured  bacon,  preserved 
food,  baked  and  brewed.  But  in  the  last  half- 
century  the  product  of  the  machine  in  the  fac- 
tory has  invaded  the  household  and  displaced 
the  home-made.  More  and  more,  woman 's  work 
in  the  home  has  come  to  be  cooking,  cleaning, 
and  caring  for  children.  As  the  household  has 
shriveled  in  economic  importance  the  daughters, 
in  order  not  to  burden  their  parents,  have 
streamed  forth  from  the  home  (where  often 
there  remains  little  useful  work  for  them  to  do) 
to  the  mill,  the  laundry,  the  restaurant,  the 
telephone  exchange,  the  store,  the  office  and  the 
school-room.  At  present  there  cannot  be  fewer 
than  ten  million  American  women  above  sixteen 
years  of  age  earning  outside  the  home,  and 
the  proportion  so  employed  grows  constantly. 
Women  wage-earners  are  increasing  in  number 


38  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

much  faster  than  men  wage-earners  and  form 
an  ever-larger  contingent  of  the  army  of  in- 
dustry. 

This  flood-tide  out  from  the  shelter  of  the 
home  into  paid  work  by  no  means  indicates  that 
the  average  American  wife  is  quitting  the 
hearth  for  the  sake  of  a  job.  The  feeling  that 
a  woman  with  a  husband  ought  not  to  go  out 
to  work  is  still  rather  general,  save  among  the 
poor.  Probably  not  one  wife  in  fifteen  earns 
money  outside  her  home.  Broadly  speaking,  it 
is  the  lone  women  who  are  wage-earners,  and 
half  of  them  are  under  twenty-six  years  of  age. 
\/  Of  the  girls  sixteen  to  twenty  years  of  age,  two, 
out  of  five  are  reported  as  "  gainfully  em- 
ployed." 

A  generation  ago  it  was  often  predicted  that 
a  taste  of  the  freedom  of  self-support  would 
turn  many  a  young  woman  away  from  matri- 
mony or  make  her  too  hard  to  win.  As  we 
have  seen,  however,  marriage  occurs  earlier  and 
is  more  popular  than  ever.  Yet  the  girl's  ac- 
cess to  the  job  might  have  lessened  marriage 
but  for  certain  changes  which  worked  to  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  married  woman.  While  the  out- 
look of  the  spinster  has  brightened,  the  outlook 
of  the  wife  has  brightened  more.  No  longer  is 


MAEEIAGE  AND  THE  FAMILY      39 

it  hers  to  spin  and  weave,  to  bake  and  brew, 
to  pickle  and  cure.  In  perhaps  a  third  of  the 
households — those  of  the  better-off  people — 
aside  from  the  care  of  the  children  the  woman 
is  coming  into  the  possession  of  leisure.  She 
is  no  longer  an  economic  prop  to  the  home. 
The  law  puts  it  upon  the  husband  to  maintain 
the  home  and  his  wilful  failure  to  do  so  gener- 
ally gives  his  wife  a  legal  ground  for  divorce. 
Every  year  a  man's  proposal  of  marriage  comes 
nearer  to  being  an  offer  of  lifelong  support. 

It  is  confessedly  the  wife's  part  to  bear  and 
rear  children,  but  among  the  native  stock  the 
big  family  has  for  a  long  time  been  going  out 
of  fashion.  The  first  census,  in  1790,  found 
among  the  white  population  nineteen  children 
under  sixteen  years  of  age  to  ten  women.  In 
1900  the  children  and  women  were  about  equal 
in  number.  Putting  the  matter  in  a  nutshell, 
the  average  woman  of  American  descent  has 
about  half  as  many  children  to  look  after  as  b^er 
grandmother  had.  Or  consider  the  proportion 
of  children  under  five  years  of  age  to  possible 
mothers.  In  1860  there  were,  634  children  to 
1000  such  women,  while  in  1910,  in  spite  of  an 
enormous  influx  of  fecund  immigrants  from 
Europe,  there  were  only  454,  a  fall  of  28  per 


/ 

7 


Change  in  average  size  of  families:    1790  to  1900 


cent.  Among  the  native  element  the  shrinkage 
in  the  size  of  the  average  family  during  this 
period  must  have  been  from  a  third  to  a  half. 
Birth-control,  instead  of  being,  as  among  Euro- 
pean peoples,  the  practice  of  a  sophisticated 
social  class,  shows  itself  in  America  in  all  classg. 
Much  is  lacking  in  our  knowledge  of  illegiti- 
macy in  the  United  States,  but  the  rate  appears 
to  be  considerably  lower  than  in  most  European 
countries.  The  usual  proportion  of  illegitimate 
births  to  all  births  is  from  3  per  cent,  to  4  per 
cent.  When  the  rate  exceeds  this,  it  is  usually 
owing  to  the  negroes,  many  of  whom  have  the 
most  primitive  ideas  as  to  sex  relation.  Thus 
the  city  of  Washington  has  an  illegitimacy  rate 
of  (7\6) per  cent.,  but  that  of  the  whites  is  2.3 
per  cent.,  while  that  of  the  colored  folk  is  19.5 
per  cent.  Likewise,  Baltimore's  rate  of  6.6  per 
cent.,  can  be  analyzed  into  race  rates  of  3.1  per 
cent.,  and  24.6  per  cent.  The  fact  that  out  of 
a  hundred  white  children  ninety-six  or  ninety- 
seven  are  born  in  wedlock  indicates  that  our 
society  has  attained  a  fair  degree  of  success  in 
the  control  of  the  sex  relation. 

Although  the  tide  of  divorce  is  rising  the 
world  over,  nowhere  is  it  so  high  as  in  the 


42  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

United  States.  Probably  one  marriage  in  ten 
ends  in  the  divorce  court.  In  some  states  £Ee 
proportion  is  one  in  five.  This  tendency  has 
been  misconstrued  as  a  sign  that  the  home  is 
less  sacred  to  Americans  than  to  certain  other 
peoples.  The  fact  is  that  two  thirds  of  the  di- 
vorces are  granted  to  aggrieved  wives  and  the 
reason  why  American  wives  will  not  put  up 
with  the  drunkenness,  cruelty,  or  unfaithfulness 
in  their  husbands  that  the  women  of  other  coun- 
tries put  up  with,  and  that  their  grandmothers 
bore  in  silence,  is  that  they  respect  themselves 
more,  have  a  higher  ideal  of  what  a  union  should 
be,  and  know  that  once  they  are  divorced  they 
can  support  themselves  by  their  labor. 

The  laws  of  the  states  allow  divorce  only  on 
serious  grounds,  and  for  a  long  time  now  there 
has  been  no  drift  toward  greater  laxity.  Nor 
are  there  signs  that  our  people  are  abandoning 
the  hallowed  ideal  of  marriage  as  a  lifelong 
union.  Bare  is  the  couple  that  takes  the  vows 
of  wedlock  with  any  other  desire  or  expectation 
than  a  union  till  death.  Women's  colleges  will 
point  with  pride  to  a  roll  of  several  hundred 
graduates  no  one  of  whom  has  ever  been  a  party 
to  a  divorce  proceeding. 

Among  intelligent  people  divorce  is  looked 


MAKKIAGE  AND  THE  FAMILY      43 

upon  as  reflecting  upon  one 's  judgment  at  least, 
if  not  upon  one's  character.  If,  then,  there  is 
a  greater  tendency  to  seek  divorce,  it  is  not  so 
much  that  wedded  couples  care  less  for  the  home 
as  that  they  care  less  for  the  mockery  of  it. 
There  has  never  been  a  people  with  a  higher 
ideal  of  home  or  with  more  faith  in  love  than 
ours.  The  cautious  provision  of  relief  for  the 
mismated  has  made  matrimony  more  popular, 
because  marriage  does  not  present  itself  as  a 
trap  from  which  you  can  never  release  yourself 
once  the  door  has  snapped  to.  Indeed,  the  oft- 
noted  purity  of  the  American  home  and  the 
general  faithfulness  of  both  spouses  to  their 
vow  may  owe  something  to  the  opportunity  of 
the  unhappy  to  secure  relief  on  a  legal  basis 
instead  of  in  following  secret  amorous  intrigue. 


CHAPTER  IV 

GOVERNMENT 

THE  United  States  is  the  oldest  of  all  of  the 
federal  governments  in  the  world.  Its 
Constitution,  drawn  up  in  1787,  is  perhaps  the 
most  venerable  political  charter  now  in  force. 
In  its  century  and  a  third  of  life  the  American 
union  has  come  to  rule  over  five  times  its  origi- 
nal area,  inhabited  by  thirty  times  as  many 
people,  and  it  joins  in  harmony  forty-eight 
states  instead  of  thirteen.  With  the  exception 
of  the  four  years '  war  between  North  and  South 
(1861-65)  growing  out  of  the  question  of  negro 
slavery,  the  peace  has  been  kept.  If  Kansas 
is  aggrieved  with  Colorado  over  the  latter 's 
diversion  of  the  upper  waters  of  the  Arkansas 
River  for  irrigation;  if  Missouri  contends  that 
Illinois 's  methods  of  disposing  of  Chicago  sew- 
age pollute  the  water  of  the  Mississippi  which 
flows  at  her  door,  the  states  do  not  arm  and 
threaten  one  another  as  they  might  do  were 
they  independent.  Their  dispute  is  quietly 

44 


GOVERNMENT  45 

settled  by  a  lawsuit  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States. 

No  one  doubts  that  the  American  Union 
stands  to-day  firmer  than  ever.  It  was  an  ex- 
periment when  it  was  set  up  over  the  original 
thirteen  proud  and  jealous  colony-states;  but 
now  it  is  older  than  three  quarters  of  the  states. 
The  national  idea  has  struck  root  deep  in  the 
soul  of  the  people.  The  nation,  which  some- 
times calls  upon  the  citizen  to  shed  his  blood 
for  it,  is  more  loved  than  the  state,  which  re- 
quires nothing  more  tragic  than  jury  duty  or 
the  payment  of  taxes.  To  be  sure,  differences 
arise — between  North  and  South  over  the  treat- 
ment of  the  negroes ;  between  the  Pacific  Coast 
and  the  rest  of  the  country  over  Oriental  immi- 
gration; between  lending  East  and  borrowing 
West  over  the  money  standard — but  nobody  lies 
awake  at  night  because  of  them,  and  not  an  extra 
musket  is  ordered.  One  side  convinces  the 
other,  or  they  compromise,  or  else  something 
happens  to  ease  the  tension.  The  storm  may 
be  brewing  that  will  uproot  this  venerable  and 
majestic  oak,  but  no  one  knows  in  what  quarter 
to  look  for  it.  So  far  as  we  can  see,  the  Union 
will  outlive  all  its  present  citizens. 


GOVERNMENT  47 

The  American  political  system,  like  a  huge 
spinning  gyroscope,  refuses  to  be  pushed  from 
its  plane  of  rotation.  When  in  1898  the  United 
States  unexpectedly  found  itself  possessed  of 
Cuba,  Porto  Rico,  and  the  Philippine  Islands — 
fruits  of  its  victory  over  Spain — many  pro- 
phesied for  the  country  a  career  of  empire. 
But  Cuba  was  set  free  under  protection;  the 
Philippines  will  receive  like  treatment  as  soon 
as  they  appear  to  be  ready  for  it;  and  Porto 
Rico  is  governed  just  as  territories  have  been 
governed  for  a  hundred  and  thirty  years. 

We  are  warned  that  the  system  is  getting 
out  of  plumb;  that  continually  Washington 
grows  at  the  expense  of  the  individual  states; 
that  in  the  end  the  state  will  be  a  mere  province. 
It  is  true,  of  course,  that  the  national  govern- 
ment is  doing  now  many  things  which  were, 
or  might  be,  done  by  state  government.  In 
our  time  we  have  seen  it  take  up  banking,  bank- 
ruptcy, the  care  of  savings,  rural  credits,  the 
liquor  traffic,  national  elections,  child  labor,  rail- 
roads, telegraphs,  and  "trusts."  But  while 
the  state  government  is  indeed  losing  certain 
powers  and  functions  to  Washington,  new 
powers  and  functions  are  devolving  upon  it. 
It  is  annexing  to  its  field  the  guardianship  of 


48  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

the  public  health ;  the  care  of  the  defective  and 
the  insane ;  the  regulation  of  public-utility  com- 
panies; the  supervision  of  insurance  companies 
and  state  banks;  the  building  of  trunk  high- 
ways; the  maintenance  of  state  forests  and 
parks;  the  conservation  of  fish  and  game;  the 
inspection  of  weights  and  measures ;  the  testing 
of  foods  and  drugs ;  the  settlement  of  wild  lands, 
and  the  providing  for  every  form  of  higher 
education.  No  doubt  Washington  looks  after 
many  matters — foreign  affairs,  army  and  navy, 
quarantine,  foreign  trade,  patents,  currency, 
banking,  navigation,  fisheries,  immigration, 
shipping,  the  public  lands,  the  national  forests, 
agricultural  experiment  stations,  the  postal  sys- 
tem, the  railroads,  and  interstate  commerce. 
But  so  long  as  the  state  has  sole  charge  of  the 
laws  and  institutions  pertaining  to  the  family, 
property,  inheritance,  business,  labor,  poor  re- 
lief, crime,  vice,  education,  and  municipalities, 
the  state  legislature  will  have  its  hands  full. 

The  federal  government  is  erected  upon  the 
people,  not  upon  the  states.  It  is  like  a  great 
Hindoo  temple  built  about  and  above  various 
shrines  but  in  no  wise  resting  on  them.  Since 
it  is  in  the  very  nature  of  governments  to  ab- 
sorb power,  one  may  wonder  that  Washington 


50  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

has  not  niched  jurisdiction  from  the  states. 
Why  does  not  Congress  make  the  state  legisla- 
tures dance  to  its  piping?  The  answer  is  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  a  tribunal 
of  nine  life- judges  removable  only  on  impeach- 
ment. Although  the  judges  are  appointed  by 
the  President  with  the  approval  of  the  Senate, 
this  court  stands  aloof  from  politics  and  is 
not  a  part  of  the  current  administration.  Hav- 
ing the  last  word  as  to  the  interpretation  of  the 
Constitution,  it  cries  "Halt!"  to  the  federal 
government  or  to  the  state  government  when  it 
judges  that  either  is  encroaching  on  the  ap- 
pointed sphere  of  the  other.  It  is  like  the  po- 
liceman at  the  congested  street  crossing,  who 
throws  up  his  hand,  now  to  check  vehicles  while 
the  north-south  traffic  flows  by,  now  to  interrupt 
the  flow  in  order  to  let  the  east-west  traffic  pass. 
To  keep  the  ship  of  state  on  an  even  keel  is 
no  light  task.  In  its  long  life  the  Supreme 
Court  has  had  to  deal  with  developments  quite 
unforeseen  by  the  authors  of  the  Constitution. 
The  states  have  been  drawn  together  by  rails 
and  telegraph  wire.  The  output  of  field  and 
factory  goes  everywhere.  Industry  and  trade 
are  hardly  aware  of  state  lines.  Corporations 
employ  five  sixths  of  the  labor  in  the  mills  and 


52  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

turn  out  six  sevenths  of  the  product.  The  con- 
trol of  most  of  these  corporations  is  in  the  hands 
of  a  few  financial  groups.  The  market  for 
capital  and  credit,  once  local,  is  now  national, 
even  international.  The  people  feel  less  as 
Ohioans  or  Texans  and  more  as  Americans. 
Yet  in  this  mill-race  of  change  the  Supreme 
Court  has  not  failed  to  keep  a  reasonable  bal- 
ance between  state  and  nation.  The  equipoise 
contemplated  by  the  Constitution,  although  dis- 
turbed, has  never  been  lost.  Perhaps  there  are 
more  of  our  people  who  think  centralization  has 
not  gone  far  enough  than  there  are  who  think 
that  it  has  gone  too  far. 

It  is  not  easy  to  adapt  the  Constitution  to 
changing  needs.  An  amendment  must  be  pro- 
posed by  two  thirds  and  adopted  by  three 
fourths.  Would  it  not  be  better  if  an  amend- 
ment might  be  proposed  by  a  majority  and 
adopted  by  two  thirds'?  Nevertheless,  the  Con- 
stitution is  not  so  rigid  as  we  feared,  for  it  has 
been  amended  three  times  in  the  last  six  years. 
Then,  too,  once  a  good  reform  has  been  nailed 
down  in  the  Constitution,  we  know  it  is  there  to 
stay  and  we  pass  on  to  the  next  thing.  If  it 
were  easier  to  get  a  reform  in,  it  would  be  easier 
to  get  it  out,  so  that  we  should  be  kept  in  a 


GOVEENMENT  53 

constant  turmoil  over  matters  we  now  dismiss 
as  settled. 

The  American  political  system  leaves  much 
responsibility  to  the  people  of  each  locality. 
The  laws  of  the  state  are  carried  out  not  by 
state  officers  but  by  county  judges,  prosecutors, 
and  sheriffs.  No  other  country  in  the  world 
leaves  so  much  latitude  to  locally  chosen  officers. 
This  hinges  the  enforcement  of  certain  state 
laws  largely  upon  local  opinion.  The  county 
prosecutor  does  or  does  not  proceed  against 
law-breaking  liquor-sellers  or  gamblers  accord- 
ing as  his  political  supporters  are  for  or  against 
liquor-selling  or  gambling.  In  most  states  the 
governor  can  do  nothing  about  the  non-enforce- 
ment of  law  in  a  county  or  a  city  until  the  situa- 
tion is  bad  enough  to  justify  him  in  sending 
in  the  state  militia.  Only  a  few  states  have 
a  police  of  their  own. 

The  fact  is  that  in  the  administration  of  jus- 
tice the  American  people  are  very  tenacious  of 
their  local  control.  They  do  not  want  their 
agencies  of  government  to  work  in  the  relentless 
manner  which  characterizes  autocracy.  Their 
law-enforcing  machinery  visibly  slows  down 
when  it  ceases  to  be  urged  by  public  sentiment. 
The  "dead-letter"  laws  on  the  statute-book 


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GOVEENMENT  55 

prove  how  slight  is  its  automatic  action.  On 
the  other  hand,  in  thirty  years  thirty-seven  huiy 
dred  persons  ha\£  been  lynched,  though,  to  be 
sure,  in  the  last  fifteen  years  the  rate  is  but 
a  third  of  what  it  used  to  be.  The  people,  see- 
ing so  many  large  matters  like  commerce  and 
business  slipping  inevitably  from  their  imme- 
diate control,  seem  more  than  ever  determined 
that  the  organs  of  justice,  at  least,  shall  obey 
their  will. 

The  development  of  facilities  for  forming 
and  focusing  opinion  makes  public  opinion  the 
mentor  and  master  of  the  man  in  public  place. 
The  fact  that  an  official  has  three  or  four  years 
to  serve  before  he  steps  down  among  his  fellow 
citizens  does  not  lead  him  to  imagine  that  he 
may  use  his  power  just  as  he  pleases.  Public 
opinion  is  ever  at  his  elbow  and  in  America  rare 
indeed  is  the  office-holder  who  dreams  of  pitting 
his  puny  strength  against  it.  He  may  in  the 
end  carry  out  merely  the  will  of  his  party  or 
his  class,  but,  if  he  does  so,  he  does  it  by  duping 
the  public,  not  by  defying  it. 

More  and  more,  public  opinion  rules  govern- 
ment, rules  even  the  elections  which  shape  gov- 
ernment. The  telegraph  has  made  the  country 
one  vast  whispering-gallery,  The  fast  trains 


56  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

lay  down  the  newspapers  of  the  great  cities  six 
or  eight  hundred  miles  away  before  they  are 
a  day  old.  Certain  weekly  papers  are  read  all 
the  way  from  Maine  to  California,  from  mule- 
driver  to  magnate.  Still  more  national  in  in- 
fluence are  the  monthly  magazines,  which  are 
published  in  New  York  or  Boston,  to  be  sure, 
but  which,  so  far  as  local  bias  goes,  might  as 
well  be  edited  on  Pike's  Peak.  Besides  these, 
the  country  is  netted  with  numerous  wide  lec- 
ture-circuits and  Chautauqua  circuits,  which 
give  to  a  thinker  who  can  talk  well  a  wonder- 
ful chance  to  spread  his  ideas. 

The  newspapers  reflect  opinion  rather  than 
mold  it.  In  recent  years  they  have  lost  pres- 
tige because  many  of  their  readers  suspect  them 
of  being  under  the  thumb  of  their  advertisers. 
The  "commercialization  of  the  press"  is  a 
phrase  that  has  sunk  deep.  Then,  too,  the  news- 
paper is  frequently  a  great  earning  property 
owned  by  some  rich  man  instead  of  by  the  edi- 
tor. Hence,  the  ultimate  sources  of  public 
opinion  are  not  the  newspapers  but  the  weekly 
and  monthly  periodicals,  the  utterances  of  out- 
standing persons  (such  as  Dr.  Charles  W.  Eliot, 
Ex-President  Taft,  Mr.  (rompers,  and  Miss 
Jane  Addams),  the  deliverances  of  influential 


GOVERNMENT  57 

groups  like  the  bar  associations,  the  bankers,  or 
the  scientific  bodies,  the  pronouncements  of  the 
pulpit,  the  attitude  of  the  universities,  and  the 
opinions  of  serious  writers,  whose  books  are 
brought  within  reach  of  a  wide  public  by  means 
of  the  thousands  of  public  libraries. 


CHAPTER  V 

EDUCATION 

CONSIDERING  that  about  twenty-five  mil- 
lions of  young  people,  three  quarters  of 
all  who  are  between  five  and  eighteen  years 
of  age  and  not  far  from  a  quarter  of  the  entire 
population,  are  enrolled  in  school,  one  must  pro- 
nounce education  to  be  the  greatest  single  spirit- 
ual enterprise  in  America.  In  nearly  all  parts 
of  the  Union  the  child's  schooling  is  sure,  even 
though  the  parent  be  ignorant  or  greedy.  The 
teachers  of  America — three  quarters  of  a  mil- 
lion in  number — are  twice  as  numerous  as  all 
who  devote  themselves  to  religion,  charity,  law, 
art,  or  literature.  The  yearly  outlay  on  edu- 
cation is  not  far  short  of  a  billion  dollars,  while 
the  gifts  and  bequests  to  education  in  the  last 
twenty  years  aggregate  five  hundred  millions.. 
Nevertheless,  there  is  no  national  system, 
save,  perhaps,  for  vocational  education.  The 
matter  is  left  to  the  individual  states,  and  some 
of  the  states  leave  it  pretty  much  to  the  local 

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WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 


authorities.  This  results  in  a  great  unevenness 
in  school  opportunities,  some  commonwealths 
being  ten  times  as  liberal  in  providing  for  their 
children  as  other  commonwealths.  The  more 
it  is  left  to  parents  to  determine  how  much 
shall  be  spent  on  education,  the  more  surely 
ignorance  perpetuates  itself.  The  only  states 
which  have  reason  to  take  pride  in  the  intelli- 
gence of  their  young  people  are  those  which 
have  gone  pretty  far  in  the  direction  of  central- 
ization. 

In  the  South  it  has  been  difficult  to  get  on 
with  education,  owing  to  the  large  element  of 
backward  negroes,  who  care  little  or  nothing  for 
schools,  and  to  the  impoverishment  of  that  sec- 
tion by  the  Civil  War.  Nowhere,  however,  has 
the  cause  of  education  lately  inspired  more  en- 
thusiasm or  made  greater  progress  than  in  some 
.jrf  the  Southern  States.  In  other  parts  of  the 
i  country  education  is  held  back  by  the  presence 
I  of  great  numbers  of  non-English-speaking  im- 
migrants, many  of  whom  do  not  appreciate  how 
much  good  schools  can  do  to  provide  their 
children  with  opportunities.  Although  many 
American  commonwealths  attain  a  high  uniform 
level  of  education  for  their  children,  the  indica- 
tions are  that  a^  tenth  of  those  above  ten  years 


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df  age  cannot  read  and  write  English.  Two 
fifths  of  the  illiterates  are  negroes,  and  of  the 
white  illiterates  more  than  half  are  foreign- 
born.  The  examination  of  the  draft  registrants 
for  the  army  showed  that  there  is  twice  as  much 
illiteracy  as  the  figures  of  the  1910  census  had 
revealed.  The  state  of  things  disclosed  is  so 
shocking  that  we  may  soon  see  an  endeavor  to 
bring  the  backward  states  up  to  a  national 
standard  by  means  of  federal  grants  in  aid  of 
public  education. 

Of  late  the  American  public  has  come  to  be 
concerned  with  other  services  for  children  than 
teaching.  The  ignorance  and  apathy  of  many 
parents  has  obliged  the  'School  to  assume  almost 
a  paternal  care  over  its  charges.  The  school- 
children are  examined  by  physicians  and  den- 
tists, who  call  the  attention  of  parents  to  con- 
ditions needing  treatment.  School  nurses  are 
provided.  Free  text-books  are  furnished  and, 
in  some  cases,  free  hot  lunches.  As  regards 
provision  for  recreation,  it  has  grown  altogether 
too  big  for  the  school.  In  twenty  years  a  giant 
playground  movement  has  brought  into  being 
in  our  towns  and  cities  four  thousand  supervised 
playgrounds  looked  after  by  eight  or  nine  thou- 
sand professional  play-leaders  and  supervisors. 


EDUCATION  63 

In  every  country  the  national  education  has 
the  outline  of  a  lofty  mountain,  broad  at  the 
base  and  tapering  upward  into  a  peak.  Now, 
the  peculiarity  of  American  education  is  not 
breadth  of  base,  for  there  are  countries  which 
are  more  successful  than  the  United  States  in 
getting  their  children  into  the  public  elementary 
schools.  It  is  not  height  of  peak,  for  American 
universities  stand  no  higher  than  those  of  cer- 
tain other  countries.  But  it  is  breadth  of  edu- 
cation in  its  middle  range — say  from  the  sev- 
enth year  of  instruction  to  the  twelfth — for  no- 
where else  do  so  large  a  proportion  of  the 
children  receive  secondary  instruction  as  in 
America. 

Not  always  has  it  been  so.  A  generation  ago 
in  most  parts  of  the  country  free  education  con- 
sisted of  the  teaching  of  reading,  writing,  and 
arithmetic,  together  with  a  little  history  and 
geography.  Now,  however,  it  is  indeed  a  small 
and  poor  place  that  does  not  provide  a  free 
"high  school."  In  thousands  of  American 
communities,  the  finest  building  you  see  is  the 
home  of  the  high  school.  It  has  come  to  be 
taken  for  granted  that  twelve  years  are  re- 
quired— that  ist  until  the  eighteenth  yftflf  »f  «gff 
— to  give  an  individual  a  proper  education.  In 


64  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

this  matter  the  public  heart  has  dilated  fifty 
per  cent,  in  half  a  century. 

These  public  high  schools,  which  were  form- 
erly little  more  than  gangways  to  college,  are 
now  attended  by  multitudes  of  young  people 
who  have  not  the  slightest  prospect  of  push- 
ing on  to  a  higher  education.  Perhaps  not  one 
j  in  eight  who  completes  the  high  school  will  ever 
|win  a  college  degree.  This  means  that  these 
schools  are  becoming  the  universities  of  the 
people,  in  which  the  son  or  the  daughter  of  the 
motorman  or  the  mechanic  may  gain  prepara- 
tion for  some  well-paid  calling  and  a  rather 
broad  outlook  on  the  world. 

The  enthusiasm  of  Americans  for  bringing 
this  grade  of  education  within  the  reach  of 
young  people  in  their  homes  may  be  gaged  by 
the  fact  that  the  number  of  public  high  schools 
is  now  twelve  thousand — three  hundred  times 
as  many  as  there  were  fifty  years  ago  and  five 
times  as  many  as  there  were  thirty  years  ago. 
Or  consider  how  the  boys  and  girls  hasten  to 
avail  themselves  of  these  opportunities.  Be- 
tween 1889  and  1896  the  pupils  in  our  public 
high  schools  doubled  in  number.  They  doubled 
again  between  1896  and  1908,  and  have  doubled 
again  in  the  last  ten  years. 


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66  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

Before  the  public  came  into  this  field,  middle 
or  " secondary"  education  was  provided  by 
private  high  schools  which  charged  tuition  fees. 
But  nowadays  the  pupils  in  these  schools,  al- 
though they  increase  slowly  in  number,  are  com- 
ing to  be  but  a  small  division  of  a  great  army. 
While  thirty  years  ago  they  constituted  well 
nigh  a  third  of  all  those  in  high  schools,  they 
are  now  only  a  little  more  than  a  tenth, 
r-*  The  chief  aim  of  the  "free-high-school" 
movement  has  been  not  so  much  national  effi- 
ciency  as  social  democracy.  Thoughtful  Amer- 
icans realize  that,  so  far  as  possible,  all  should 
have  an  even  chance  to  show  what  they  can  do 
I  in  the  race  of  life.  Hence,  society  should  adopt 
jj;he  policy  of  equalizingopportunities.^  We  do 
not  yet  see  just  how  to  correct  the  inequalities 
arising  from  the  inheritance  of  property,  busi- 
ness, or  family  influence.  At  any  rate,  however, 
a  system  of  public  education  which  is  free  clear 
to  the  top  will  do  much  to  open  doors  to  the 
poor  man's  children.  So,  at  least,  it  is  working 
out  in  America.  Probably  nowhere  else  does 
the  bright  boy  of  the  day-laborer  face  such  a 
prospect  of  rising.  Nowhere  else  does  the 
clever  son  of  the  farmer  or  the  machinist  have 
so  good  a  chance  of  getting  into  a  profession. 


EDUCATION  67 

To  be  sure,  the  cost  of  instruction  is  but  a 
part  of  the  cost  of  education,  for  the  pupil  has 
to  have  food  and  clothes  while  he  is  in  school. 
The  power  of  the  children  of  the  poor  to  con- 
tend for  the  prizes  of  life  on  equal  terms  with 
the  children  of  the  well-to-do  is  limited  by  the 
inability  of  the  parents  of  the  former  to  keep 
them  in  school.  It  is  true  that  friendly  hands 
are  many  and  the  bright  youth  who  reaches  col- 
lege will  be  helped  through.  Still,  only  one  in 
nine  of  those  who  enter  the  schools  finishes  the 
high  school  and  but  one  in  seventy  graduate^ 
from  college,.  It  is  likely  that  more  pupils  drop 
out  of  school  from  lack  of  means  than  from  lack 
of  ability.  If  we  are  resolved  to  equalize  edu- 
cational opportunities,  we  should  see  that  no 
capable  child  has  to  break  off  its  education  on 
account  of  poverty.  To  realize  this  ideal  we 
may  have  to  spend  twice  as  much  on  education 
as  we  do  now. 

University  extensionjs  another  stroke  on  be- 
half of  democracy.  The  university  which  the 
American  state  maintains  is  not  content  with 
teaching  a  few  thousand  students  in  its  halls. 
What  of  the  tens  of  thousands  kept  away  by 
the  stern  necessity  of  earning  their  living!  So 
by  means  of  correspondence  courses  of  study 


68  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

and  itinerant  lecturers  the  university  campus 
is  made  as  wide  as  the  state  itself.  One  state 
university,  which  has  three  times  as  many 
students  out  of  sight  of  its  dome  as  there  are 
within  sight  of  it,  has  sent  missionaries  through 
the  shops  and  factories  and  organized  groups 
of  artisans  to  study  under  the  direction  of 
traveling  instructors  who  teach  them  on  em- 
ployers *  time. 

With  so  many  public  fountains  playing  every- 
where, who  will  go  thirsty  for  knowledge  ?  One 
reason  for  the  cheerful  tone  of  American  life  is 
that  few  early  aspirations  are  utterly  thwarted. 
Where  else  in  the  world  dares  youth  so  revel  in 
hopes  and  dreams?  Not  only  do  most  of  our 
young  folks  have  a  try  at  the  prizes  of  life,  but 
democracy  sees  to  it  that,  while  the  big  prizes 
are  not  so  big  as  they  are  in  the  Old  World, 
there  are  a  far  greater  number  of  middle-sized 
prizes.  Thanks  to  free  education,  nearly  every 
able  ambitious  youth  gets  something,  and  has, 
besides,  the  respect  of  himself  and  others. 

Behind  the  high-school  movement  lies  also  the 
citizenship  idea.  We  are  fond  of  the  saying, 
"  The  cure  for  the  evils  of  democracy  is  more 
democracy. "  When  too  many  of  the  voters  are 
being  fooled  by  the  politicians,  it  never  occurs 


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(The  curve  represents  a  9-year  moving  average) 


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70  WHAT  IS  AMEEICA? 

to  us  that  we  ought  to  turn  politics  over  to  the 
intelligent  class.  It  is  agreed  by  all  that  the 
people  must  be  made  intelligent.  The  ward 
leaders  teach  the  ignorant  voter,  especially  the 
naturalized  immigrant,  that  a  political  party 
exists  not  TO  serveTSe  nation  but  to  serve  it- 
self; that  to  be  independent  in  voting  is  to 
betray  a  sacred  obligation ;  that  in  politics  your 
duty  is  "to  stand  by  your  friends."  The 
good  citizens  reply  with  the  demand  that  the 
schools  train  youth  for  citizenship.  Within 
twenty  years  it  has  come  to  be  a  matter  of 
course  that  the  high-school  students  should  be 
well  grounded  in  the  fundamentals  of  democracy 
— majority  rule,  free  speech,  the  importance  of 
law-enforcement,  the  place  of  party,  the  sacred- 
ness  of  the  ballot,  the  merit  system  in  the  civil 
service  and  the  responsibilities  of  public  office. 
The  leaders  of  the  people  in  intellectual  mat- 
ters receive  their  training  in  upward  of  five 
hundred  colleges  and  universities  attended  by 
a^  quarter  of  a  million  youth,  a  third  of  them 
young  women.  Four  out  of  five  of  these  institu- 
tions are  on  a  private  basis  and  are  supported 
by  gifts  and  income  from  endowments.  Grad- 
ually, however,  the  states  have  been  brought 
to  recognize  a  duty  toward  higher  education. 


EDUCATION  71 

Of  late,  thanks  to  generous  state  aid,  their  uni- 
versities have  grown  like  Jonah's  gourd. 

The  two  types  of  university,  endowed  and 
public,  in  a  way  supplement  each  other.  Aside 
from  the  duty  to  teach,  the  former  feels  its 
obligation  is  to  learning  or  science,  while  the 
latter  is  conscious  of  a  special  duty  toward  the 
people  who  support  it.  Moreover,  each  acts 
as  a  check  on  the  other.  The  scholar  would 
have  less  freedom  in  America  but  for  the  fact 
that  the  able  professor  who  has  trouble  in  the 
one  type  of  university  usually  finds  asylum  in 
the  other.  For  example,  the  teacher  of  political 
economy  whose  teachings  offend  the  rich  men 
on  the  board  of  trustees  of  an  endowed  college 
may  be  called  to  a  state  university,  while  the 
biologist  whose  utterances  on  eugenics  call 
forth  public  clamor  may  be  taken  up  by  some 
endowed  institution  which  can  snap  its  fingers 
at  popular  prejudices.  Thanks  to  this  compe- 
tition, and  thanks  to  a  powerful  association  of 
university  professors  which  makes  the  public 
acquainted  with  violations  of  "academic  free- 
dom," the  American  colleges  and  universities 
generally  enjoy  public  confidence  and  are  play- 
ing an  ever-larger  part  in  guiding  the  social 
advance. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BUBAL,  AMEBICA 

THE  very  appearance  of  the  American  coun- 
try-side proclaims  a  rural  life  which  is 
without  the  stamp  of  ancient  feudalism  or  con- 
quest, a  soil  which  is  innocent  of  lord  or  serf. 
The  farmers  are  not  huddled  together  in  vil- 
lages, for  safety's  sake,  but  each  lives  on  his 
own  land.  There  is  no  rural  gentry.  One 
misses  the  fine  residence,  set  in  a  park,  which 
in  most  parts  of  Europe  houses  the  gentleman 
land-owner;  one  misses,  too,  the  cottages  or  huts 
of  the  farm  laborers,  which  are  so  characteristic 
of  the  Old  World.  Typical  of  America  is  the 
independent  farmer  living  on  his  own  farm  (in 
two  thirds  of  the  cases  from  20  to  175  acres 
in  size)  and  tilling  it  with  the  aid  of  his  family. 
He  it  is,  and  not  the  hired  farm  laborer,  who 
carries  the  heavy  end  of  American  agriculture. 
In  fact,  if  all  the  " hired  men"  of  the  country 
were  divided  equally  among  the  farms,  there 

72 


EUEAL  AMERICA  73 

would  be  less  than  two  thirds  of  a  man  to  a 
farm!  The  common  practice  is  for  a  farmer 
to  hire  a  man  to  help  him,  often  a  neighbor's 
son,  during  the  growing-season  and  one  or  more 
men  additional  during  harvest.  Here,  then,  in 
the  open  country,  is  the  very  citadel  of  ouj; 
democracy — a  working  population  accustomed 
neither  to  take  orders  nor  to  give  them. 

Not  manor-house  nor  cottage  but  the  farm 
home — with  more  or  less  comfort  and  beauty, 
according  to  the  age,  skill,  and  thrift  of  the 
owner — is  the  thing  that  strikes  you  in  the  coun- 
try-side. In  the  more  favored  districts,  a  gen- 
eration or  two  after  the  first  settlement,  the 
frequency  of  pleasant  homes  set  back  of  a 
grassy  plot  and  flanked  by  shade-trees,  garden, 
and  orchard,  suggests  that  most  of  the  wealth 
drawn  from  the  soil  remains  in  the  hands  of  its 
cultivator.  To  be  sure,  agricultural  America, 
which  comprises  two  fifths  of  the  people,  has 
scarcely  a  third  of  the  wealth.  But  in  going 
about  one  does  not  receive  the  impression,  as 
one  does  in  Eussia  for  example,  that  the  country 
has  been  bled  in  order  to  fatten  the  town.  Save 
in  certain  spots  where  the  plague  of  absentee- 
landlordism  has  taken  hold,  resulting  in  a  popu- 
lation of  tenants  rather  than  farm-owners,  the 


74  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

American  country  has  of  late  gained  steadily 
in  comfort,  attractiveness,  and  finish. 

Fifty  years  ago,  after  the  virgin  West  had 
been  pierced  by  railways,  the  giving  away  of 
government  land  as  " homesteads"  tempted  too 
many  people  into  agriculture.  Farming  was 
overdone,  with  the  result  that  produce  came 
near  to  being  a  drug  on  the  market.  The 
"homesteaders"  lived  poor,  it  is  true,  but  they 
felt  their  privations  were  compensated  by  the 
great  increase  in  the  value  of  their  homesteads. 
In  the  older  sections,  however,  the  meagerness 
of  the  farmer's  money  return  spread  a  blight 
over  the  rural  scene.  Especially  was  this  no- 
ticeable thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  after  the 
rapid  conquest  of  the  trans-Mississippi  prairies 
by  the  plow  had  brought  a  general  sag  in  the 
prices  of  farm  produce.  The  embittered  farm- 
ers lashed  out  at  the  nearest  groups — the  rail- 
ways, the  grain-buyers,  the  middlemen,  the  im- 
plement-makers, the  bankers — without  realizing 
that  the  tap-root  of  their  troubles  was  over- 
production rather  than  extortion. 

The  frontier  virtually  came  to  an  end  twenty- 
odd  years  ago  and  soon  after  farm  produce 
climbed  to  prices  which  made  farming  profit- 
able. Ere  long  the  townsman  began  to  respect 


RURAL  AMERICA  75 

farming  and  envy  the  farmer.  The  last  fifteen 
years  have  witnessed  a  furor  over  agricul- 
ture, a  back-to-the-land  movement,  and  an  eager 
•study  of  rural  conditions.  The  problems  of 
the  open  country  are  being  attacked  with  as 
much  vigor  as  city  evils  were  attacked  thirty 
years  ago. 

While  there  has  been  a  strong  tendency 
toward  the  concentration  of  ownership  of  tim- 
ber lands,  mineral  deposits,  mines,  and  water- 
power  sites,  the  tide  is  not  running  in  the  direc- 
tion of  large  farms.  In  thirty  years  the  aver- 
age size  of  American  farms  has  remained  in 
the  neighborhood  of  one  hundred  and  forty 
acres,  worth  now  perhaps  $10,000  to  $12,000. 
Although  agriculture  and  manufacturing  have 
about  the  same  output  of  value,  the  number  of 
farms  is  six  and  a  half  millions  as  against  less 
than  a  third  of  a  million  factories.  Not  the 
big  estate  but  the  medium-sized  farm  which  one 
family  can  handle  has  proved  to  be  the  best  unit 
for  agriculture.  The  large  holdings  which  pre- 
vail in  certain  of  the  Western  States  are  due  to 
the  low  rainfall  which  makes  a  larger  acreage 
necessary  to  support  a  family.  The  big  farm  is 
not  winning  as  in  manufacturing  the  big  con- 
cern has  won,  but,  instead,  the  big  farm  is  being 


76  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

divided  into  small  family  units.  So  far  as  we 
can  see,  the  law  for  modern  industry  is  not  at  all 
the  law  for  modern  agriculture. 

In  the  number  of  rented  farms  there  has  been 
a  decided  increase  for  the  country  as  a  whole. 
In  1880  tenant  farmers  constituted  25.6  per  cent, 
of  all  farmers ;  in  1890,  28.4  per  cent. ;  in  1900, 
35.3  per  cent.,  while  in  1910  tenants  constituted 
37  per  cent,  of  all  farmers  and  operated  25 
per  cent,  of  the  land.  Tenancy  has  been  in- 
creasing among  the  white  farmers  of  the  South 
and  in  the  grain-growing  region  of  the  North- 
west; it  has  been  decreasing  in  the  older  agri- 
cultural regions  of  the  East  and  in  the  Rocky 
Mountain  and  Pacific  states.  In  the  South, 
where  tenancy  has  largely  taken  the  place  of 
the  old  slave-plantation  system,  it  prevails  be- 
cause many  negroes  have  gained  the  ability  to 
handle  a  small  farm  under  direction,  but  are 
not  yet  "up  to"  independent  ownership.  In 
several  other  regions  tenancy  has  been  stimu- 
lated by  the  great  increase  in  the  money  return 
from  farming  since  the  stock  of  good  public 
land  ran  out.  A  farm  which  twenty  years  ago 
could  support  but  one  family  will  now  support 
two — that  of  the  owner  who  has  retired  to  the 
neighboring  village  and  that  of  the  tenant. 


78  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

Speculation  in  farm  land  makes  it  somewhat 
more  difficult  than  formerly  to  acquire  a  farm. 
After  the  open  frontier  came  to  an  end,  it  was 
clear  that  the  existing  farm  land  would  in  time 
acquire  a  scarcity  value,  so  that  speculators  and 
farmers  soon  bid  up  the  prices  to  an  exorbitant 
figure.  In  the  decade  ending  in  1910  the  farm 
land  of  the  country  was  marked  up  one  hundred 
and  eighteen  per  cent.;  but  the  price  of  farm 
products  had  not  increased  on  an  average  more 
than  sixty-seven  per  cent.  The  tying  up  of  un- 
settled land  in  the  hands  of  investors  has  worked 
in  the  same  direction. 

In  Texas  and  the  rest  of  the  South  white 
tenancy  shows  some  very  forbidding  features. 
But  for  the  country  as  a  whole  it  is  far  from 
true  that  two  fifths  of  our  tillers  of  the  soil 
are  without  hope.  Over  three  fourths  of  the 
farmers  under  twenty-five  years  of  age  are 
tenants,  and  somewhat  over  half  of  those  be- 
tween twenty-five  and  thirty-five  years  of  age. 
But  among  the  farmers  thirty-five  to  forty-five 
years  of  age  only  about  one  third  are  tenants; 
among  those  forty-five  to  fifty-five  about  one 
fourth ;  among  those  fifty-five  to  sixty-five  about 
one  fifth ;  and  among  those  over  sixty-five  years 
of  age  only  about  one  seventh.  This  means  not 


80  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

that  tenants  are  dying  young  or  quitting  the 
farm,  but  that  they  are  moving  up  a  ladder. 
The  first  rung  is  labor  for  hire;  the  second, 
tenancy;  the  third,  ownership  subject  to  a  mort- 
gage; the  fourth  and  top  rung  is  ownership  of 
an  unencumbered  farm.  Great  numbers  are 
climbing  this  ladder,  but  the  rungs  are -farther 
apart  than  in  the  days  when  farm  land  every- 
where was  cheap  because  of  that  great  open 
grab-bag  of  farms — the  public  domain.  Now 
one  stays  longer  on  a  rung  before  he  can  lift 
himself  to  the  next  rung  above.  So  the  greater 
number  of  tenants  means  not  so  much  the  com- 
ing into  existence  of  a  large  hopeless  class  as 
later  arrival  at  the  top  of  the  ladder. 

A  recent  study  of  2112  farm-owners  in  the 
Middle  West,  made  under  the  direction  of  Pro- 
fessor W.  J.  Spillman  of  the  U.  S.  Department 
of  Agriculture,  throws  light  on  this  upward 
movement.  Nearly  three  quarters  of  them  had 
been  hired  men,  or  tenants,  or  both,  before  they 
acquired  farms.  Of  these,  setting  aside  those 
who  came  by  their  farms  through  inheritance 
or  marriage,  about  71  per  cent,  became  owners 
through  purchase.  Those  who  skipped  the 
tenant  stage  became  owners  at  the  average  age 
of  twenty-nine  years;  those  who  skipped  the 


KURAL  AMERICA  81 

hired-man  stage  became  owners  at  thirty-two 
years ;  those  who — starting  probably  with  noth- 
ing— passed  through  both  stages  came  to  own 
farms  at  the  average  age  of  thirty-six  and  a 
half  years. 

As  the  value  of  farm  land  goes  up,  one  who 
starts  at  the  bottom  must  tarry  longer  in  the 
lower  stages.  Those  who  acquired  their  farms 
more  than  thirty  years  ago  spent  on  the  average 
4.9  years  as  tenants ;  those  who  got  their  farms 
in  the  next  decade,  7.2  years ;  those  who  achieved 
ownership  in  the  next  to  the  last  decade,  9.6 
years;  and  those  who  did  it  only  within  the 
last  decade,  11  years.  For  these  same  four 
groups,  the  average  time  spent  as  hired  man 
was  respectively  5.2,  6.1,  7.5,  and  7.9  years.  In 
other  words,  the  period  of  service  for  hire  in- 
creased 50  per  cent.,  while  the  length  of  the 
tenant  stage  more  than  doubled. 

There  are  signs,  too,  that  much  of  the  tenancy 
that  exists  is  a  mere  incident  in  the  transmission 
of  farms  from  one  generation  to  the  next.  A 
recent  study  of  a  locality  in  Wisconsin  shows 
that  two  out  of  five  tenants  bear  the  same  name 
as  the  landlord.  Add  the  sons-in-law,  and  more 
than  half  the  tenants  would  prove  to  be  pros- 
pective heirs.  When  the  farmer  lived  out  his 


82  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

life  on  the  old  place,  the  farm  was  worked  by 
son  or  son-in-law  as  a  member  of  the  family. 
Now  that  the  farmer  has  retired  to  the  village, 
it  is  worked  by  the  relative  as  a  tenant.  The 
difference  is  apparent  rather  than  real. 

There  are  eminent  students  of  the  land  prob- 
lem who  contend  that  a  hard-working  and 
thrifty  young  man  starting  with  bare  hands  has 
a  brighter  prospect  now  than  his  grandfather 
had  in  the  heyday  of  the  famous  song,  "  Uncle 
Sam  has  land  enough  to  give  us  all  a  farm.'* 
To  be  sure,  he  reaches  ownership  perhaps  fifteen 
years  later,  but  then  his  farm  is  worth  more 
than  a  frontier  homestead  and  yields  him  a  far 
better  living.  Meanwhile,  he  has  the  benefit  of 
a  developed  community  life  and  escapes  the 
hardships  and  privations  which  sent  many  of 
the  pioneers  to  untimely  graves. 

As  regards  the  bad  sort  of  tenancy,  we  may 
be  sure  it  will  not  be  allowed  to  grow  indefi- 
nitely. Well  do  the  American  people  realize 
that  the  enduring  base  of  their  democracy  is 
a  wide  diffusion  of  farm-ownership  and  they 
will  not  allow  this  base  to  be  eaten  away.  They 
will  never  let  their  yeomen  disappear  as  the 
yeomen  were  allowed  to  disappear  from  Eng- 
land between  1820  and  1900.  Once  they  are 


Yr 

KURAL  AMERICA  83 

awake  to  certain  sinister  tendencies,  they  may 
be  trusted  to  act  resolutely.  By  standardiza- 
tion of  leases,  boards  to  fix  "fair"  rents,  the 
progressive  taxation  of  agricultural  land,  or 
other  means,  they  will  contrive  to  handicap  the 
absentee  landlord  and  to  smooth  the  way  to 
ownership  by  the  actual  cultivator. 

American  farmers  have  shared  rather  tardily 
in  the  cooperative  movement  which  has  worked 
such  wonders  in  Ireland,  Denmark,  Germany, 
and  Russia.  The  intense  individualism  fostered 
in  them  by  scattered  settlement,  poor  roads, 
and  production  for  home  use  has  stood  in  the 
way  of  their  team-work.  It  is  in  states  with 

element,  rather  than  in 


the  pure-American  parts,  that  rural  cooperation 
has  made  its  greatest  strides.  Still,  special 
farming  is  a  great  teacher  of  union,  and  among 
the  orange-growers  of  California,  the  apple- 
growers  of  Washington,  and  the  dairy-farmers 
of  Wisconsin,  cooperation  has  taken  firm  hold. 
In  Wisconsin  there  are  nearly  seven  hundred 
cooperative  creameries  and  cheese  factories,  six 
hundred  cooperative  telephone  systems,  and  two 
hundred  mutual  insurance  companies,  not  to 
mention  cooperative  elevators,  stores,  and 


J 


84  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

banks.  The  new  slogan,  " Better  business,"  is 
turning  the  farmer  >s  mind  toward  team-work, 
and  some  think  he  may  soon  become  as  hearty 
a  cooperator  as  the  North-European  farmer. 

The  -state,  which  formerly  neglected  agricul- 
ture, has  of  late  found  a  thousand  ways  to  aid 
it.  The  "high  cost  of  living,"  which  stole  upon 
us  a  few  years  after  our  stock  of  virgin  soil  was 
gone,  has  'Stimulated  every  activity  which  may 
aid  food-production.  The  United  States  De- 
partment of  Agriculture,  about  twenty  years 
ago,  started  on  a  growth  which  has  made  it 
the  hugest  pacific  branch  of  governmental  ac- 
tivity in  the  world.  Its  great  stroke  is  the  plac- 
ing of  expert  advisers  within  reach  of  the 
farmers.  Although  the  system  of  "county 
agents ' '  as  they  are  called,  has  sprung  up  within 
a  dozen  years,  it  will  not  be  long  before  every 
one  of  the  tirrftj^f.horyflaTifl  p.nuTvh'ea  in  the  land 
will  have  its  adviser,  perhaps  also  its  organizer 
of  clubs  and  cooperative  societies  and  its  woman 
expert  to  give  counsel  to  the  farmers'  wives. 


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V 


CHAPTER  VII 

URBAN    AMERICA 

WHEN"  George  Washington  became  first 
President  of  the  United  States,  our 
largest  city  had  but  forty-two  thousand  inhabi- 
tants, while  only  one  American  in  thirty  lived 
in  the  six  towns  of  more  than  eight  thousand 
population.  At  present  there  cannot  be  fewer 
than  seven  hundred  such  cities,  in  which  dwell 
at  least  two  fifths  of  all  the  people.  The  soul 

of  Old  America  was  rural.     Americans  were 

— • 

noted  for  practicality,  coolness,  shrewd  common 
sense,  homespun  democratic  ways  and  dislike 
of  show,  which  are  traits  of  farmers  rather 
than  townsmen.  But  so  many  of  the  oncoming 
generation  are  growing  up  in  cities  that  it  will 
not  be  long  before  the  national  soul  is  urban. 

The  indraught  to  the  cities  has  become  stron- 
ger since  the  disappearance  of  the  frontier. 
Formerly  the  overflow  from  the  farms  split  into 
two  currents,  the  one  current  seeking  the  cities, 
the  other  seeking  the  West.  Now  it  all  pours 

86 


URBAN  AMERICA  87     '* 

toward  the  cities.  Then,  too,  the  immense  tide 
of  wanderers  from  the  Old  World  has  thrown 
city  and  country  out  of  balance.  While  earlier! 
streams  of  immigrants  flowed  out  upon  virgin  \ 
soil,  the  Latins,  Magyars,  Slavs,  Greeks,  and 
Levantines,  who  have  predominated  since  1895, 
have  been  drawn  into  the  mills  and  become  at 
once  causes  and  victims  of  city  congestion. 
Broadly  speaking,  the  open  country  remains  the 
stronghold  of  old  Americanism,  while  the  city 
is  the  " melting-pot."  The  foreign  element  is 
rarest  on  the  farms.  Its  representation  ad- 
vances step  by  step  with  the  size  of  the  cities, 
until,  in  the  very  largest  centers,  the  foreign- 
born  constitute  a  third,  and  the  foreign  stock 
three  quarters,  of  the  population. 

Thirty  years  ago  the  government  of  the 
greater  American  cities  was  something  to  blush 
for.  While  the  local,  town,  state,  and  national 
governments  were  fairly  honest,  economical, 
and  serviceable,  cities  like  New  York,  Philadel- 
phia, Chicago,  St.  Louis,  Cincinnati,  San  Fran- 
cisco, Baltimore,  and  New  Orleans  were  ruled 
by  corrupt  rings  which  kept  themselves  in  power 
by  means  of  naturalization  frfl]]jsT  manipula-^ 
tion  of  the  nominating  machinery,  vote-buying, 
"colonizing,"  "repeating,"  the  filling  of  public 


88  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

offices  with  party  '  *  workers ' '  and  the  establish- 
ment of  relations  of  protection  and  fealty  with 
ignorant  and  helpless  immigrants.  The  ring 
jobbed  public  works  and  the  purchase  of  public 
supplies.  In  return  for  contributions  and  sup- 
port it  allowed  railway,  tramway,  water,  gas 
and  electric-light  companies  to  treat  their  pa- 
trons about  as  they  pleased.  For  secret  pay- 
ments the  saloons,  gambling-shops,  and  houses 
of  prostitution  were  allowed  to  prey  upon  the 
public  without  restraint.  The  public  offices 
were  rarely  filled  by  competent  men,  while  city 
employees,  in  order  to  keep  their  jobs,  had  to 
think  more  of  serving  the  party  machine  than 
of  serving  the  public. 

The  causes  of  a  state  of  things  so  repugnant 
to  American  political  traditions  and  ideals  were 
these : 

A  large  and  shifting  population. 
\/K  great  proportion  of  recent  immigrants. 
Preoccupation  of  intelligent  men  with  their 

business  or  profession. 
A  clumsy  system  of  municipal  government. 

Through  tjie  first  decade  of  this  century,  in 
the  boss-ridden  cities,  resolute  bands  of  "  re- 
formers" carried  on  a  vigorous  agitation 


Y* 

URBAN  AMERICA  89 

against  the  ring  system.  They  set  detectives 
and  experts  to  unearthing  evidence  of  waste, 
fraud,  and  favoritism,  with  which  to  rouse  an 
apathetic  public.  They  founded  "  bureaus  of 
municipal  research"  to  test  the  cost  and  per- 
formance of  city  departments.  Non-partisan 
"municipal  voters'  leagues"  kept  records  of 
each  councilman  and  before  election  warned  the 
citizens  against  the  "gray  wolves"  of  the  city 
council.  Public-spirited  young  business  and 
professional  men  were  organized  into  "city 
clubs"  to  fight  for  better  things.  By  spread- 
ing right  ideas  of  citizenship  among  the  naive  y 
foreign-born  the  social  settlements  drew  them 
away  from  the  ward  bosses.  Newspapers,  even 
sordid  ones,  took  up  the  fight  on  the  bosses,  for 
a  shrewd  editor  could  see  with  half  an  eye  that 
here  was  thrilling  melodrama  with  villains, 
heroes,  plots,  deeds  of  daring  and  "hair- 
breadth 'scapes." 

The  reformers  made  the  country  gasp  with 
their  proofs  of  city  misgovernment,  and  when 
they  found  the  ring  too  firmly  intrenched,  they 
were  able  to  bring  against  them  forces  outside 
the  city.  They  persuaded  Congress  to  enact 
legislation  to  put  a  stop  to  naturalize  t.i  on  m  y 
frauds.  They  got  the  state  to  adopt  the  secret 


90  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

official  ballot,  take  the  nominating  machinery 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  bosses,  separate  munici- 
pal elections  from  other  elections,  require  the 
advance  registration  of  voters,  and  set  up  a 
" public  utilities"  commission  to  regulate  com- 
panies operating  under  a  municipal  franchise. 
When  they  had  forced  the  ring  out  of  their  bomb- 
proofs  into  the  open,  it  was  easy  to  beat  them, 
for  never  has  the  ring  been  a  conspiracy  of  the 
majority  to  exploit  the  prosperous  minority. 
In  no  American  city  has  a  majority  of  the  voters 
ever  persisted  in  supporting  a  corrupt  muni- 
cipal government. 

The  ring  is  now  as  extinct  as  the  dodo,  but  its 
passing  did  not  bring  efficient  government.  In 
order  to  keep  separate  the  executive  and  legis- 
lative powers,  the  American  municipality  had 
followed  the  mayor-council  model.  But  the 
councilmen  elected  by  wards  were  likely  to  be 
petty  politicians,  rather  than  men  known  all 
over  the  city.  Then,  too,  there  were  so  many 
of  them  that  individually  they  could  wriggle 
out  of  responsibility  for  misgovernment.  The 
voters  knew  not  whom  to  blame  when  things 
went  badly.  Strangely  enough,  it  was  a  great 
disaster — the  wrecking  of  the  Gulf  port  Galves- 
ton  by  a  great  storm  in  1900 — which  brought 


THE  PEOPLE 


THE  PEOPLE, 


1  1 

-  —  —  —  --.|    JUDICIAjtYj 

CITY     COMMISSION 

MHMMMMM 

OF  MNANCE 

AND   REVENUE 

COMMISSIONER 

or 
Puauc  WORKS 

COnniSSlONCK 
OF 
PUOUC  AFFAIRS 

comusioNEROf 

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COMMISSIONOV 
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auprue« 

THE  PEOPLE 
|     CITY  COUNCIL          '"IJUPICIARY| 


Mayor,  Commission  and  City  Manager  plans  of  government 


92  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

on  a  crisis  out  of  which  sprang  the  ucommis^ 
sion"  plan  of  city  government.  This  contem- 
plates the  concentration  of  power  in  a  board 
of,  say,  five  men,  elected  *  '  at  large  '  '  and  giving 
all  their  time  to  their  duties.  Each  is  working 
head  of  a  department  of  administration,  and 
as  a  board  they  legislate. 

The  plan  gets  bigger  men  into  municipal  serv- 
ice, makes  responsibility  definite,  and  leaves 
small  shelter  for  "politics."  It  gives  great 
power  to  a  few  men,  but  the  people  exact  the 
fullest  publicity  and  wield  the  power  to  "re- 
call" at  any  time  a  distrusted  commissioner. 
Moreover,  they  reserve  the  right  to  have  sub- 
mitted to  a  popular  vote  a  measure  which  a 
certain  percentage  of  the  voters  petition  for  but 
which  the  commission  does  not  approve,  and 
also  a  paeagpre  wjiich  the 


but  which  a  certain  percentage  of  the  voters 
protest  against.  These  safeguards  of  popular 
control  are  known  as  "initiative"  and  "refer- 
endum. '  > 

Although  the  largest  municipalities  fight  shy 
of  it,  the  commission  form  of  government  is  now 
in  operation  in  nearly^  five  hundred  American 
^cities.  Of  late,  however,  much  is  heard  of  a  yet 
newer  model,  thejsi  ty-man  ager  plan.  The  idea 


URBAN  AMERICA  93     \J 

is  to  entrust  the  management  of  a  city  to  a  non- 
political  officer  who  shall  be  to  the  city  council 
what  the  manager  of  a  company  is  to  its  board 
of  directors.  He  need  not  be  a  resident  and 
may,  indeed,  be  called  from  managing  some 
other  city,  just  as  the  successful  works  manager 
or  mine  superintendent  is  called  from  one  job 
to  a  better  job.  Already  about  a  hundred  cities 
have  such  a  manager,  and  the  new  profession 
of  city  management  bids  fair  to  eliminate  the 
local  amateur  from  the  municipal  scene. 

While  city  governments  now  come  near  to 
doing  what  they  were  intended  to  do,  the  secret 
of  the  civic  humanism  that  everywhere  calls 
into  being  parks  and  playgrounds,  baths  and 
social  centers,  municipal  high  schools  and  uni- 
versities, is  to  be  sought  in  another  quarter. 
The  seven  hundred  social  settlemenfe  which 
have  been  founded  in  one  hundred  and  fifty 
cities  since  1885  constitute,  with  their  three 
thousand  residents,  a  social  movement  which 
may  be  compared  with  that  set  up  by  St.  Francis 
of  Assissi.  The  idea  is  that  a  group  of  persons 
of  the  fortunate  class  should  settle  among  the 
poor,  become  their  friends,  and  give  such  help 
as  a  friend  may.  The  success  of  these  settle- 


94  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

merits  has  surpassed  all  hopes.  No  one  sus- 
pected that  so  many  well-educated  young  people 
felt  prickings  of  conscience  about  social  inequal- 
ities and  were  wishful  to  serve  the  poor. 

r^  Out  of  the  social  settlements  came  a  better 
feeling  between  alley  and  avenue.  The  slum- 

,  dwellers  proved  to  have  more  virtue  and  talent, 
the  rich  more  heart  and  conscience,  than  had 
been  suspected.  Ties  of  sympathy  knit  to- 
gether the  urban  classes,  and  the  better  people 
in  both  learned  to  work  shoulder  to  shoulder 
for  the  common  good.  The  settlement  served 
as  an  observatory  from  which  watchers  re- 
ported to  the  whole  city  how  boss  government 
was  betraying  the  weak.  The  public  learned 
how  the  groggeries  broke  city  ordinances  with 
impunity;  how  the  police  brutally  arrested  the 
pickets  of  girl  strikers;  how  the  streets  in  the 
industrial  quarter  were  left  unswept,  and  how 
the  health  department  neglected  the  poor, 
fhus  gradually  the  bosses  were  undermined 
among  the  wage-earners,  the  very  citadel  of 
their  political  power. 

"Thanks  to  this  good  understanding  among  the 
social-minded  of  all  classes,  "public  welfare" 
has  become  a  phrase  to  conjure  with.  People 
of  means  do  not  stand  as  one  man  against  the 


URBAN  AMERICA  95 

extension  of  city  services  which  will  not  benefit 
them.  The  well-to-do  are  ashamed  of  the  self- 
ish minority  of  the  propertied  who  make  outcry 
over  paying  taxes  to  provide  playgrounds,  and 
to  safeguard  the  health  of  the  plain  people.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  poor  do  not  insist  on  new 
services  from  the  city  government  merely  be- 
cause they  have  the  votes;  they  demand  only 
those  which  they  regard  as  "right."  At  bot- 
tom municipal  socialism  is  a  moral  movement 
inspired  by  a  vision  of  the  "common  good.** 
The  public-welfare  aim  was  put  into  American 
city  government  not  by  a  victory  of  proletariat 
over  bourgeoisie,  but  by  the  leadership  of  hu- 
manist settlement  residents,  social  workers,  doc- 
tors, educators,  librarians,  architects,  and  pro- 
bation officers,  who  captivated  people  with  their 
pictures  of  what  might  be.  The  beauty  of  ad- 
vance inspired  by  such  motives  is  that  no  con- 
siderable class  is  left  sore  and  unreconciled,  and 
no  political  overturn  can  put  in  jeopardy  what 
has  been  gained. 

The  good  things  the  plain  people  are  getting 
out  of  the  regenerated  city  government  are  not 
"bread  and  circuses"  but  security,  health,  ac- 
cess to  art,  literature,  and  beauty.  In  such  a 
program  there  is  little  to  attract  the  coarse, 


V 


WHAT  IS  AMEBICA? 


'material  man.     The  man  in  overalls  is  for  it 
chiefly  because  of  what  it  holds  for  his  children 
md  other  people's  children.     For  really  it  is 
youth  that  is  the  privileged  order  under  muni- 
cipal   socialism.     The    child-welfare    stations, 
.dental  clinics,  medical  inspection  of  school-chil- 
r^dren,  mother's  pensions,  juvenile  courts,  chil- 
A  ydren's  libraries,  public  baths,  recreation  cen- 
ters, palatial  high  schools,  and  municipal  uni- 
versities are  essentially  for  the  rising  genera- 
tion.   Wage-earners    and    capitalists,    profes- 
sional men  and  business  men  stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder  in  the  noble  hope  of  a  finer  race  than 
inhabits  the  city  to-day. 

So  many  doors  of  opportunity  have  thus  been 
opened   that   only  weaklings   feel  themselves, 
nowadays,  under  the  curse  of  a  hopeless  pov- 
erty.   In  the  cities  which  receive  manyjmmi-^ 
grants  there  may  be  congested  quarters — the 


aforetime  slums — but  they  are  by  no  means 
stagnant  pools  of  poor.  They  are,  in  fact,  alive 
with  currents  which  the  visitor  does  not  note. 
The  East  Side  of  New  York  changes  its  popu- 
lation, on  the  average,  once  in  four  years. 
Each  wave  of  immigration  leaves  a  sediment, 
to  be  sure,  but  most  of  the  immigrants  lay  hold 
of  public  school  or  public  library  or  social  settle- 


TJKBAN  AMEEICA  97 

ment,  save  money,  get  on  and  move  into  the 
suburbs  so  that  their  places  are  taken  by  later 
comers. 

Let  it  be  granted  that  this  civic  rebirth  has 
not  come  within  sight  of  solving  the  social  ques- 
tion. It  has,  indeed,  brought  about  a  wider  dis- 
tribution of  welfare,  but  hardly  a  wider  distri- 
bution of  wealth.  What  has  been  done  has  not 
lightened  the  basic  task  of  getting  clothes,  shel- 
ter, and  three  meals  a  day.  The  strife  of  labor 
and  capital  goes  on  just  as  before.  The  division 
of  the  product  of  industry  is  unchanged,  for 
there  is  little  that  a  city  government  can  do  to 
affect  the  position  of  property  in  our  law. 
That  is  a  matter  determined  by  the  state  and 
national  governments.  But  the  poets  and  seers 
of  the  municipal  movement  have  faith  that,  by 
bringing  within  the  reach  of  all  the  higher 
goods  of  life,  they  can  rear  a  generation  which 
will  have  the  wisdom  and  the  self-mastery 
needed  for  solving  the  social  problem. 


* 


CHAPTER  VIII 

BUSINESS 

FIFTEEN  years  ago  successful  business 
men  enjoyed  in  America  an  unheard-of 
prestige  and  leadership.  There  was  no  terri- 
torial nobility,  as  there  is  in  Europe,  to  over- 
shadow them.  Administration  being  a  little  de- 
veloped side  of  government,  public  officials  and 
civil  servants  cut  no  great  figure  in  the  public 
eye.  Army  and  navy  officers  were  too  few  in 
number  to  wield  much  influence.  The  p.lftrgg 

•••fcB*^" 

had  been  losing  in  authority  for  a  long  time, 
while  the  profession  of  law  was  looked  upon  as 
little  more  than  the  handmaid  of  business.  As 
for  scholars,  they  were  dwarfed  by  the  million- 
aires who  created  universities  or  found  the 
money  for  their  salaries. 

In  truth,  there  was  some  justification  for 
business  men  coming  into  the  lime-light.  Dur- 
ing the  seventh  and  eighth  decades  of  the  last 
century,  the  completion  of  the  country's  rail- 
way net  and  the  low  cost  of  rail-carriage  revo- 

98 


BUSINESS  99 

lutionized  the  conditions  of  business.  The 
miller,  the  brewer,  the  slaughterer,  or  the  manu- 
facturer was  no  longer  confined  to  a  regional 
market.  He  was  confronted  with  the  glittering 
possibility  of  dominating  a  market  as  wide  as  an 
empire.  But  the  same  possibility  was  open  to 
other  millers,  brewers,  slaughterers,  and  manu- 
facturers, so  that  there  ensued  a  period  of  in- 
tensified competition  among  those  in  the  same 
branch  of  business.  This  soon  led  to  the  domi- 
nance of  a  few  large  concerns  and  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  rest. 

As  the  possibility  of  reciprocal  invasion  of 
one  another's  market  brought  about  "cut- 
throat" competition  among  the  survivors,  these 
entered  into  "trusts"  or  "combinations"  of 
vast  capitalization  and  fabulous  profits.  In 
the  years  1898-1902  the  rage  to  get  consumers 
on  the  hip  by  means  of  a  combination  to  con- 
trol prices  extended  even  to  branches  of  busi- 
ness which  had  not  suffered  from  cut-throat 
competition. 

The  spectacle  of  fortunes  made  overnight  out 
of  the  anticipation  of  profits  to  be  reaped  from 
the  combining  of  railroads,  smelters,  or  mills, 
swept  many  men  from  their  anchorage  in  com- 


100  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

mon  sense.  An  infatuation  for ' '  business ' '  was 
aroused,  by  no  means  all  sordid,  for  it  was  the 
power  of  the  " kings"  of  railways,  oil,  steel,  cop- 
per, sugar,  or  tobacco  that  was  coveted,  rather 
than  their  money.  To  the  less  thoughtful  pub- 
lic, business  came  to  wear  the  aspect  of  a  big  ex- 
citing game  played  for  colossal  stakes.  Since 
the  strain  on  the  players  was  terrific,  the  win- 
ners were  hailed  as  supermen.  There  was,  to 
be  sure,  some  ground  for  this  hero-worship,  for 
business  had  long  been  a  magnet  for  ambitious 
youth.  After  the  Civil  War  commercial  pur- 
suits attracted  far  more  than  their  fair  share 
of  the  talented  young  men  of  each  generation. 
Beginning  with  the  curbing  of  the  Western 
railways  by  farmer-legislators  in  the  early 
seventies,  a  movement  to  regulate  certain  forms 
of  business  in  the  public  interest  developed  side 
by  side  with  the  merger  of  railways,  the  *  *  trusti- 
fication" of  industries,  and  the  general  tendency 
toward  the  concentration  of  control  into  a  few 
hands.  But  in  the  period,  1897-1906,  the  move- 
ment made  no  real  headway,  while  the  regula- 
tion already  achieved  came  to  be  little  better 
than  a  sham.  Corporation  lawyers  who  had 
been  exalted  to  the  judge 's  bench  had  no  hesita- 
tion in  finding  regulative  enactments  "uncon- 


BUSINESS  101 

stitutional. "  The  edge  of  the  law  always 
turned  when  it  came  against  large  enterprises. 
The  political  parties  pretended  to  fight  the  mag- 
nates, but  their  managers  were  secretly  hand- 
in-glove  with  them.  Notwithstanding  the  in- 
dignant protest  of  the  producing  classes,  the 
commercial  and  professional  groups,  the  intel- 
lectuals, and  the  propertied  class  were  apa- 
thetic or  hostile  toward  regulation.  A  host  of 
sycophantic  newspapers,  politicians,  and  paid 
advocates  held  up  the  "  captains  of  industry " 
as  the  arch-benefactors  of  society.  Taking 
their  cue  from  their  most  envied  members,  the 
business  group  become  intoxicated  with  self- 
importance  and  felt  themselves  superior  to  the 
law  of  the  land.  It  is  literally  true  that  from 
about  1900  to  1903  many  of  the  accepted  spokes- 
men of  business  in  the  United  States  were  dis- 
tinctly of  the  predatory  type  and  propagated  a 
criminal  manner  of  thinking.  Meanwhile  the 
disappointment  and  wrath  of  the  farmers  and 
working-men  reached  such  a  point  that  in 
thoughtful  circles  it  was  common  to  liken  the 
period  to  that  immediately  preceding  the 
French  Kevolution. 

Fortunately  the  spell  was  broken  by  the  flood 
of  light  cast  upon  the  ways  of  big  business  dur- 


102  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

ing  the  "epoch  of  exposure"  beginning  about 
1901.  A  number  of  brilliant  magazine  writers 
made  the  public  acquainted  with  the  inner  his- 
tory of  railroad  finance,  the  life-insurance  com- 
panies, the  "trusts,"  and  the  municipal  public- 
service  companies.  The  magazines  which  first 
dared  to  play  the  search-light  upon  the  most 
powerful  men  in  the  country  quickly  gained 
readers  and  made  money.  Observing  that  fire 
did  not  fall  upon  them  from  heaven,  other  pe- 
riodicals joined  the  hue  and  cry.  Little  news- 
papers which  braved  their  bankers  and  big  ad- 
vertisers in  order  to  publish  the  truth  grew  like 
mushrooms.  Then  administrative  boards  and 
legislative  committees  began  to  investigate  and 
brought  to  light  conditions  worse  than  even  the 
magazinists  had  suspected. 

By  a  clever  use  of  publicity  President  Roose- 
velt made  such  probes  his  ally  in  putting  the 
intrenched  "interests"  on  the  defensive  and 
wresting  remedial  legislation  from  a  reluctant 
Congress.  Within  five  years  a  great  revulsion 
of  public  feeling  had  taken  place.  For  the  first 
time  the  citizens  were  able  to  see  why  the  vicious 
political  machines  bore  a  charmed  life.  The 
hidden  powers  were  laid  bare  that  paralyzed 
the  arm  of  government,  manipulated  the  courts, 


BUSINESS  103 

and  made  jumping- jacks  of  the  newspapers. 
Hitherto,  among  educated  people  it  had  been 
considered  vulgar  to  denounce  the  conduct  of 
great  enterprises.  But  now  conviction  pene- 
trated the  very  citadels  of  honest  conservatism. 
Bishops,  scholars,  writers,  professional  men,  re- 
tired persons,  and  sometimes  even  the  proper- 
tied threw  their  weight  on  the  side  of  protest 
and  reform.  The  infatuated  public  perceived 
that  it  had  been  worshiping  false  gods  and 
transferred  its  trust  from  ^p  flapping  nf  foflpg^  . 
try  to  the  devoted  reformers,  settlement  woife-  ^  * 
«raL_fl<OTnnnriHffa|  gfliflntiatfl.  aiTd  fippt.at.nrp  whn 
had  faithfully  warned  them  when  truth-telling 
was  not  only  unpopular  and  unprofitable  but 
even  perilous. 

By  1908  or  1909  "muck-raking/'  as  it  was 
called,  came  to  an  end,  partly  owing  to  the  un- 
scrupulous coloring  of  facts  by  sensational 
magazinists,  partly  because  all  business  men — 
the  straight  as  well  as  the  crooked — were  fall- 
ing under  the  suspicion  of  the  public.  Never- 
theless, the  "muck-rakers"  left  lasting  effects 
in  the  realm  of  commerce  and  finance.  Many 
business  men  who  had  been  drifting  with  the 
tide  came  under  the  conviction  of  sin,  mended 
their  ways,  and  helped  to  make  others  do  the 


104  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

same.  The  corporations  in  the  public  eye 
hastily  rid  themselves  of  their  discredited 
agents  and  put  in  charge  of  their  affairs  up- 
right men  who  commanded  public  confidence. 
As  commercial  practices  improved,  men  who 
had  been  handicapped  by  their  scruples  came 
to  the  front.  A  new  type — clean,  public-spir- 
ited, and  social-minded — gained  leadership  in 
the  business  group. 

Since  then  a  revolution  has  taken  place  in 
commercial  ideals.  Money-making  without  re- 
d  to  moral  standards  and  the  law  of  the  land 
lias  fallen  into  bad  odor.  Regulation  is  no 
longer  waved  aside  as  mere  "meddlesome  in- 
terference." The  doctrine  that  service  is  the. 
sole  justification  for  profit  wins  a  growing  ac- 
ceptance, although  it  would  be  too  much  to  say 
that  it  actuates  the  ordinary  business  man. 
From  the  courses  in  commerce  in  the  universi- 
ties go  out  trained  young  men  imbued  with  a 
professional  feeling  for  business.  In  schools 
of  business  administration  and  of  journalism, 
no  less  than  in  schools  of  law  and  of  medicine, 
instruction  in  the  ethics  of  the  calling  has  come 
to  be  an  essential  part  of  the  curriculum. 
Nearly  every  town  has  its  "  association  of  com- 
merce," which  takes  as  its  aim,  "to  make  busi- 


BUSINESS  105 

ness  thrive  by  promoting  the  welfare  of  the  en- 
tire community." 

There  is  now  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
tone  of  business  here  is  not  at  least  as  high  as 
it  is  anywhere  in  the  world.  In  short,  this 
change  wrought  in  the  course  of  a  few  years,  by 
a  redirection  of  public  opinion,  constitutes  the 
most  striking  moral  transformation  in  the  his- 
tory of  American  society  since  the  rise  of  the 
anti-slavery  movement.  «- 


I 


CHAPTER  IX 

LABOR 

THANKS  to  free  schools  and  the  reading- 
habit,  American  labor  has  been  far  from 
blind  to  its  own  interests.  Nevertheless,  the 
labor  movement  was  slow  to  develop  in  the 
United  States  owing  to  the  ease  of  getting  a 
farm  or  a  business  for  oneself  and  becoming 
independent.  The  frontier  has  always  been  a 
haven  for  the  strong,  discontented  spirits  of  the 
working-class — natural  leaders  who  would  have 
welded  and  wielded  their  class  had  they  stayed 
kwith  it.  The  solidity  and  good  generalship  of 
labor-unionism  for  the  last  twenty  years  is  due 
in  part  to  the  closing  of  the  old  outlet  for  in- 
surgent working-men. 

For  a  long  time  American  labor  was  on  the 
up-curve,  but  of  late  it  has  had  to  cope  with 
certain  adverse  conditions.  The  combining  i)f 
many  scattered  concerns  into  a  "trust"  gives 
capital  the  whip-hand  over  labor,  for,  if  one 
plant  is  tied  up  by  a  strike,  its  orders  will  be 

106 


LABOR  107 

filled  by  the  other  plants  in  the  trust.  In  the 
end,  there  is  nothing  for  the  strikers  to  do  but 
submit.  This  is  -why,  until  the  War  Labor 
Board  took  a  hand  in  the  matter,  unions  were 
virtually  excluded  from  the  widening  field  of 
"trusts." 

Women,  who  fifty  years  .ago  were  but  an  V 
eighth  of  all  wage-earners,  now  form  nearly  a 
quarter.  Their  growing  competition  is  a 
handicap  to  the  unskilled  male  workers,  for,  in 
general,  women  employees  do  not  fight  for  their 
own  hand  as  men  do.  Besides,  nearly  half  of 
them  are  single  women,  twenty-five  years  of  age 
or  under,  who  have  a  prospect  of  marriage  and 
hence  do  not  stake  their  future  on  their  job. 

Far  more  serious  is  the  competition  to  which 
unskilled  labor  has  been  subjected  by  the  vast 
streaming-in  from  Mexico  and  the  T^w-WflfrQ-  \ 
parts  of  Europe.  To  the  employer  this  inflow 
of  aliens,  many  of  them  used  to  a  vegetable  diet, 
child  labor,  and  meek  obedience,  is  a  godsend. 
In  the  forty  years  since  he  began  rubbing  this 
Aladdin's  lamp  his  profits  have  been  sensa- 
tional. But  to  the  Americans  exposed  to  its 
competition  this  immigrant  tide  has  brought 
hardship.  Often  foreign  labor  was  introduced 
into  an  industry  not  from  lack  of  hands  but  in 


108  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 


order  to  replace  the  too-demanding  natives. 
The  history  of  the  foreign-born  in  soft-coal  min- 
ing is  the  story  of  the  replacement  of  English- 
speaking  miners  first  in  Pennsylvania  and  West 
Virginia,  next  in  the  Middle- Western  field,  and 
lastly  in  the  coal  regions  of  the  Far  West. 

The  immigrants  arrive  needy  and  bound  to 
take  a  job  at  any  pay.  Coming  from  the  farm, 
they  lack  the  trade-union  idea.  Without  our 
speech  and  often  illiterate,  they  are  hard  to 
reach  and  bring  into  line.  The  labor  organizer, 
it  is  true,  wins  them  in  the  end ;  but  by  the  time 
one  group  has  been  welded  into  a  union  he  has 
another  bunch  of  "greenies"  on  his  hands.  So 
the  lines  of  labor  are  weak,  forming,  breaking, 
and  re-forming  in  the  face  of  intrenched  capital. 
From  some  of  the  flooded  industries  labor  or- 
ganizations had  quite  disappeared  in  the  decade 
before  the  war. 

ith  these  currents  against  him  the  common 
American  laborer  was  falling  behind  until  the 
war  came  to  his  rescue.  Between  1900  and  1912 
money  wages  rose,  but  real  wages  fell  probably 
as  much  as  ten  per  cent.  Formerly  each  ten- 
year  census  seemed  to  show  more  of  the  prod- 
uct going  to  labor,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  more 
capital  was  working  with  the  laborer.  But  the 


LABOR 


109 


1910  census  revealed  capital  getting  more  of 
the  product  and  labor  getting  less.  Before  the 
war  nearly  half  of  the  men  in  organized  indus- 
try earned  less  than  $600  a  year,  while  four 
fifths  received  less  than  $750.  Such  incomes 
may  have  looked  good  to  the  toilers  of  other 
lands,  but  not  to  Americans,  who  felt  that  even 
the  unskilled  ought  to  keep  up  with  the  social 
procession. 

Still,  labor  is  far  stronger  socially  than  it  was 
thirty  years  ago.  Newspapers  no  longer  allude 
airily  to  the  " so-called"  labor  question.  Now-" 
adays  it  is  vain  for  employers  to  brand  all  labor 
leaders  as  anarchists  and  dynamiters.  The 
once-skeptical  middle  class  has  come  to  recog- 
nize the  reasonableness  of  labor  organizing,  and 
public  sympathy  has  helped  win  many  a  strike. 
The  courts  no  longer  throw  out  every  labor  law 
as  " unconstitutional."  Scores  of  labor  bu- 
reaus, state  and  federal  as  well  as  private  agen- 
cies, probe  into  wages,  hours,  and  working-con- 
ditions, so  that  rapidly  the  dark  places  in  in- 
dustry are  emerging  into  the  light  of  day. 

Ignorant  of  a  remedy  for  the  low  wages  of 
the  unskilled,  the  public  has  stilled  the  prick- 
ings of  conscience  by  attacking  certain  other 
bad  spots.  Stirred  by  the  ghastly  story  of  in- 


110 


WHAT  IS  AMERICA! 


dustrial  accidents,  it  has  done  much  in  the  last 
dozen  years  to  make  industry  safe.  Every- 
where but  in  the  South  the  states  provide  that, 
outside  of  agriculture  and  housework,  the  in- 
jured wage-earner  shall  receive  compensation. 
Child  labor,  a  growing  evil  fifteen  years  ago, 
has  been  curtailed.  While  a  general  law  limit- 
ing the  working-day  for  men  would  probably 
be  declared  unconstitutional  on  the  ground  that 
it  interfered  with  "the  freedom  of  contract, " 
judges  allow  the  legal  eight-hour  day  for  women 
and  it  is  coming  in  everywhere.  The  underpay- 
ment of  young  women  in  mill  and  shop  came  to 
be  such  a  crying  evil  that  eleven  states  fixed  a 
minimum-wage  for  working-women.  It  is  now 
settled  that  America  will  take  any  steps  neces- 
sary to  save  her  women  and  children  from  be- 
ing devoured  by  the  machine. 
x  The  war  has  given  labor  a  new  horizon.  The 
sudden  cutting  off  of  immigration  so  relieved 
the  labor  market  that  an  eight-hour  movement 
sprang  up  which  soon  swept  the  country.  After 
America  entered  the  war,  the  demands  of  the 
army  and  the  war  industries  enabled  labor  to 
advance  its  wages  to  a  very  satisfactory  level. 
The  stretching  out  of  governmental  authority 
over  war  industries  gave  a  great  lift  to  labor 


LABOR  111 

organization  by  opening  to  the  unions  fields 
from  which  they  had  long  been  shut  out.  Set- 
ting aside  the  Industrial  Workers  of  the  World 
(a  very  small  organization  with  syndicalist 
aims,  which  has  its  strength  chiefly  among  immj- 
grant,  floating,  and  seasonal  laborers),  one  can 
say  that  organized  labor  believes  it  can  take 
care  of  itself  by  the  use  of  economic  weapons 
within  the  present  social  order  and  without  any 
aid  from  the  state.  It  will  not  hear  of  a  legal 
minimum  wage  for  men,  and  compulsory  arbi- 
tration. So  long  as  immigration  is  restricted 
and  it  suffers  no  curtailment  of  the  right  to  agi- 
tate, to  organize,  and  to  strike,  it  feels  strong 
enough  to  force  trade  agreements  which  will 
protect  its  interests.  ^ 

Nothing   puzzles   the   European    radical   so  i 
much  as  the  acquiescence  of  American  working- 
men  in  private  capitalism.    Less  than  six  per, 
cent.,  perhaps  no  more  than  three  or  four  per 
cent.,  of  them  are  socialists.    In  their  non-revo-' 
lutionary  spirit  they  stand  quite  apart  from 
most  European  labor.    For  this  there  are  vari- 
ous reasons. 

In  America,  owing  to  the  relative  scarcity  of 
workers  and  the  high  productivity  of  labor 
aided  by  the  best  machinery,  the  wage  level  is 


112  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

<  >high  in  comparison  with  Europe.  The  foreign- 
born,  finding  themselves  two  or  three  times  as 
well  off  as  they  were  in  the  Old  World,  feel  that 
they  have  made  a  good  bargain  by  coming  to 
this  country. 

In  America  the  skilled  worker  stands  higher 
above  the  unskilled  in  pay  and  influence  than 
is  the  case  in  Europe.  Having  little  we-feeling 
with  the  unskilled  workers,  who  are  largely  of 

uforeign  birth,  he  is  slow  to  make  common  cause 

'**,, 


with  them.  This  want  of  solidarity  stands  in 
the  way  of  sympathetic  strikes  and  working- 
class  political  movements. 

It  is  not  at  all  uncommon  for  the  abler  skilled 
worker  to  save  enough  in  a  few  years  to  start 
in  business  on  his  own  account,  e.g.,  as  con- 
tractor or  merchant.  In  Europe  the  low  wage 
level  does  not  admit  of  this.  In  America  the 
labor  leader  who  has  the  gift  of  winning  and 
swaying  men  has  a  good  chance  of  making  a 
career  for  himself  in  politics.  In  Europe  the 
state  service  is  too  hedged  about  for  this  to  be 
possible.  Of  course,  not  many  Americans  thus 
clamber  out  of  the  labor  group ;  but  for  one  who 
does  there  will  be  ten  who  think  they  can.  Thus 
many  of  the  clever  working-men  do  not  feel  that 


LABOR  113 

they  are  "in  the  same  boat"  with  the  common 
run  of  wage-earners. 

In  Europe  conquest  and  feudalism  have  left  a 
deep  stigma  on  manual  labor.  In  America  the 
stigma  is  much  fainter.  Generally  there  is 
level  speech  and  a  certain  readiness  to  frater- 
nize between  manly  and  intelligent  men,  what- 
ever their  calling.  The  professional  men  and 
the  propertied  do  not  humiliate  the  working- 
man  with  open  contempt  or  condescension.  La- 
bor is  so  respected  that  a  national  holiday,  La- 
bor Day,  is  set  aside  in  its  honor. 

ThfiJFjTprnpftflTi  wflrfcpr.,  waging  a  double  fight  ! 
— with  the  capitalists  for  better  wages  and  with 
the  ruling  class  for  political  rights — breaks  with 
the  past  and  becomes  a  revolutionist.  The 
American  worker,  on  the  other  hand,  does  not 
hate  the  past.  To  him  democracy  recalls  Lin- 
coln and  Jefferson  and  the  signers  of  the  Decla- 
ration of  Independence.  The  European  worker, 
finding  the  church  a  state-supported  institution 
in  which  he  has  no  voice,  turns  atheist.  The 
American,  having  a  free  choice  among  people- 
supported  churches,  keeps  his  religion  and  is- 
steadied  thereby.  Notice,  too,  that  labor 
abroad  follows  the  lead  of  intellectuals  who 


114  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

contemplate  a  new  social  order,  while  American 
labor  develops  leaders  out  of  its  midst  and  does 
not  take  its  cue  from  outsiders. 
/""The  crowning  proof  of  how  little  American 
I  wage-earners  feel  themselves  to  be  a  class  apart 
\Js  their  unwillingness  to  act  together  politically. 
Notwithstanding  they  have  had  the  suffrage  in 
the  Northern  States  for  at  least  eighty  years, 
(there  is  no  chance  here  for  a  labor  party,  such 
as  one  finds  in  Europe.  A  dozen  or  more  at- 
tempts to  found  such  a  party  has  failed,  owing 
to  the  fact  that,  as  soon  as  a  labor  party 
shows  strength,  one  or  the  other  of  the  national 
parties  will  bid  for  the  labor  vote  by  adopt- 
ing "planks"  from  its  platform.  Not  being 
class  parties  they  have  a  spirit  of  justice  and 
good  will  which  prompts  them  to  give  labor 
what  it  wants  in  so  far  as  it  does  not  seem 
unreasonable.  In  this  way  labor  secured, 
even  in  the  early  days,  mechanics'  lien  laws, 
wage-exemption  laws,  home-exemption  laws, 
wage  preference,  and  the  eight-hour  day  in 
public  employment.  As  for  those  "labor" 
planks  which  no  national  party  will  touch,  they 
are  argued  down  and  laughed  at  until  even  the 
working-men  themselves  generally  lose  faith  in 
them.  Thus  the  bulk  of  the  workers  are  held 


LABOR  115 

in  solution  in  one  or  the  other  of  the  great  non- 
class  parties  which  have  members  in  every  call- 
ing and  at  every  level  of  American  society .^ 
Labor  leaders  by  no  means  hold  that  American 
conditions  are  ideal;  but  they  feel  that  labor 
has  here  a  fair  field,  is  steadily  gaining,  and 
will  continue  to  gain  if  it  shows  intelligence, 
persistence,  and  self-restraint. 


CHAPTER  X 

DEMOCRACY 

THE   American   Declaration   of  Independ- 
ence of  July  4,  1776,  stated : 

1  That  all  men  are  created  equal. 

2  That  all  have  been  endowed  by  their  Maker 
with  certain  inalienable  rights  of  which  they 
cannot  be  divested  by  any  power  and  of  which 
they  cannot  lawfully  deprive  themselves. 

3  That  among  these  rights  are  life,  liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 

It  follows  that  ''Government  is  constituted 
among  men  for  the  sole  purpose  of  protecting 
these  rights,"  and  that  all  governments  "de- 
rive their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the 
governed. " 

These  principles  are  just  as  truly  the  founda- 
tion of  "government  of  the  people,  by  the  peo- 
ple, for  the  people"  (to  use  Abraham  Lincoln's 
phrase)  as  the  divine  right  of  kings  is  the 
foundation  of  autocratic  monarchy. 

But  it  must  not  be  inferred  that  the  men  who 

116 


DEMOCRACY  117 

so  fittingly  set  forth  the  principles  of  democ- 
racy then  were  members  of  a  democracy.  Ee- 
ligious  prejudices,  the  distinctions  of  rich  and 
poor,  of  learned  and  unlearned,  which  had  come 
down  from  colonial  times,  still  held  sway  and 
maintained  a  governing  class,  by  no  means  nar- 
row or  oppressive  in  comparison  with  the  ruling 
classes  of  other  lands,  but  still  a  class. 

Nowhere  were  voting  and  office-holding  open 
to  all  men  when  the  revolting  English  colonies 
entered  the  path  of  independence.  In  every  one 
of  the  thirteen  original  states  they  were  hedged 
about  by  religious  and  property  qualifications. 
For  example,  in  one  state  the  governor  was  re- 
quired to  own  property  worth  one  hundred 
pounds,  in  another  he  had  to  have  five  hundred 
pounds,  in  another  five  thousand  pounds,  and  in 
South  Carolina  ten  thousand  pounds. 

Thirty  years  after  the  founding  of  the  United 
States  of  America  in  1789,  a  generation  had 
reached  manhood  which  had  been  bred  upon  the 
doctrines  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
What  had  been  a  phrase  to  the  fathers  was  an 
article  of  faith  to  the  sons.  Moreover,  the  in- 
terior was  being  settled  by  a  distinctively  Amer- 
ican population,  under  liberal  land  laws,  so  that 
here  the  sort  of  equality  contemplated  by  the 


118  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

Declaration  of  Independence  was  in  large  meas- 
ure realized.  From  these  commonwealths  that 
had  never  been  colonies,  had  never  known  class 
rule  and  crown  governors,  democracy  blew 
steadily  like  a  trade-wind. 

The  second  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century 
saw  the  adoption  of  manhood  suffrage,  the  mul- 
tiplication of  elective  offices,  the  shortening  of 
the  terms  of  officials  and  public  servants,  the 
spread  of  the  custom  of  submitting  new  state 
constitutions  to  popular  vote,  and  the  working 
out  of  party  organization  on  a  democratic  basis, 
as  we  have  it  to-day. 

In  1870  the  negro  freedmen  received  the  bal- 
lot. Moved  by  the  frauds  in  the  presidential 
election  of  1888,  the  states  provided,  1888-1890, 
for  secret  voting.  The  revelations  of  the 
"epoch  of  exposure,'*  1901-1908,  excited  gen- 
eral alarm  and  led  to  a  series  of  measures  de- 
signed to  break  down  the  "  invisible  govern- 
ment ' '  which  was  being  substituted  for  the  rule 
of  the  people.  Chief  of  these  were  acts  pun- 
ishing corrupt  practices  in  elections,  limitation 
of  the  expenditures  on  political  contests,  com- 
pulsory publicity  of  "campaign"  contributions 
and  expenditures,  the  nomination  of  candidates 
by  secret  ballot  of  all  party  members,  the  elec- 


DEMOCRACY  119 

tion  of  United  States  Senators  by  the  people  of 
the  state  instead  of  by  the  legislature,  popular 
law-making  by  means  of  the  "  initiative "  and 
the  "  referendum, "  and  the  right  of  the  people 
to  oust  an  official  by  a  vote  of  "recall." 
Thanks  to  these  new  bulwarks  of  democracy, 
the  American  people  now  believe  they  are  mas- 
ters in  their  house.  If  the  cards  are  stacked  so 
as  to  ensure  the  rule  of  any  class,  the  people 
do  not  know  it. 

But,  if  America  has  been  a  genuine  democ- 
racy, how  was  property  able  to  gain  for  itself 
the  extraordinary  protection — against  progres- 
sive taxation,  against  even  legislative  enactment 
— which  it  enjoyed  through  most  of  the  nine- 
teenth century?  The  explanation  is  that  the 
opportunity  to  acquire  ownership  of  farms 
made  the  settlers  in  the  West  conservative. 
Since  most  of  the  voters  owned  productive  prop- 
erty or  expected  to  own  it,  restriction  on  the 
rights  of  property  found  little  favor  in  their 
eyes.  During  the  development  period  of  the 
country  capital  was  singularly  favored.  No 
usury  laws,  no  acts  protecting  factory  workmen, 
freedom  of  banking,  strict  enforcement  of 
money  contracts,  ease  of  incorporating  joint- 
stock  companies,  open-handed  bestowal  of  pub- 


120  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

lie-utility  franchises,  absence  of  regulation  of 
the  charges  of  railroads,  public-service  concerns, 
and  insurance  companies.  The  cause,  however, 
was  not,  as  a  stranger  might  easily  suppose, 
the  secret  domination  of  capitalists,  but  the 
lack  of  capital  in  a  new  country  and  the  result- 
ing rivalry  of  young  states  to  attract  capital  to 
themselves. 

Moreover,  in  bringing  the  new  forces  under 
the  law,  American  democracy  was  hampered  by 
a  heritage  of  false  doctrine.  Early  in  the  last 
century,  Americans  generally 


ualistic  philosophy.  According  to  this  philoso- 
phy, government  is  "a  necessary  evil."  Busi- 
ness should  go  unregulated  because  in  the  long 
run  competition  suffices  to  protect  the  consumer. 
Natural  resources  owned  by  government  should 
be  transferred  as  speedily  as  possible  to  private 
hands. 

State  interference  is  considered  "meddle- 
some," save  when  it  aids  private  property  to 
increase  its  gains.  Aside  from  security  and 
order,  there  is  no  social  interest  save  the  pro- 
tection of  personal  freedom  and  the  rights  of 
property.  From  this  point  of  view,  there  can 
be  no  labor  question,  for  the  workman  dissatis- 
fied with  his  wages  or  his  treatment  is  at  per- 


DEMOCRACY  121 

feet  liberty  to  quit  work  without  warning  and 
seek  another  job. 

This  philosophy  was  reasonable  enough  at  the 
time.  The  people  had  in  the  past  suffered  more 
at  the  hands  of  government  than  from  any  other 
agency  and  very  naturally  they  were  on  their 
guard  against  it.  The  new  tyrannies  had  not 
yet  shown  themselves.  No  one  foresaw  the 
path  of  development  society  was  to  follow.  So 
it  was  that  many  of  our  wisest  and  best  men 
spread  among  the  people  a  philosophy  which 
later  was  to  prove  a  snare. 

Now,  the  impositions  suffered  by  the  public 
at  the  hands  of  public-utility  companies, 
"'trusts,"'  speculators,  food-adulterators,  and 
owners  of  bad  tenement  houses  can  be  ended 
only  by  means  of  government  intervention,  so 
that  in  order  to  obtain  relief  the  American  peo- 
ple had  to  abandon  their  inherited  faith  in  the 
harmony  between  private  interest  and  public 
interest  and  their  traditional  suspicious  atti- 
tude toward  government.  The  about-face  was 
made  earliest  among  working-men,  farmers,  and 
shippers,  who  from  experience  had  learned 
where  the  shoe  pinched.  The  politician-tools  of 
"big  business"  restrained  the  rest  by  playing 
artfully  upon  their  prejudices,  so  that  it  was 


122  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

usually  only  the  younger  men  who  accepted  the 
philosophy  proper  to  the  new  time.  Even  after 
a  majority  of  the  voters  had  been  converted, 
lawmakers,  judges,  and  officials  drawn  from  a 
legal  profession  steeped  in  an  antiquated  in- 
dividualism seriously  delayed  the  giving  effect 
to  their  will. 

r  The  evils  American  democracy  has  been  so 
tardy  in  dealing  with  had  their  sor1™0  no*  i", 
original  defects  in  our  institutions  and  laws, 
but  in  economic  developments  which  no  one  an- 
ticipated and  for  which  no  one  deserves  blame. 
Thus  the  strife  of  laborers  and  capitalists  grew 
straight  out  of  large-scale  machine  industry. 
It  was  the  inventors  who  made  the  big  concern 
more  profitable  than  the  small  concern,  so  that 
it  captured  the  field.  Certain  public-service 
agencies  which  have  sprung  up — such  as  rail- 
roads, tramways,  telegraphs,  telephones,  and 
concerns  distributing  from  a  central  source 
water,  gas,  light,  or  power — are  monopolistic 
by  nature.  The  railway  consolidations  which 
made  the  ordinary  shipper  a  pygmy  were  called 
into  being  by  the  great  economies  of  systema- 
tized transportation.  Those  who  made  steam- 
haulage  so  cheap  that  no  manufacturer's  mar- 
ket was  secure  from  invasion  by  distant  manu- 


DEMOCRACY  123 

facturers,  brought  on  the  desperate  price-cut- 
ting which  paved  the  way  for  the  movement 
toward  the  combination  of  all  competing  pro- 
ducers. It  is  the  growth  of  advertising  which 
is  responsible  for  the  commercialization  of  the 
newspapers.  The  overgrowth  of  cities  had  a 
very  innocent  cause,  viz.,  the  inrush  of  myriads^ 
of  European  peasants. 

JLet  it  be  borne  in  mind,  too,  that,  under  the 
stimulus  of  freedom  and  opportunity,  our  in- 
dustrial development  has  been  more  rapid  than 
that  of  any  other  people.  We  have  run 
through  the  series  of  modern  economic  changes 
at  high  speed.  Consequently,  problems  ha^e 
presented  themse)vear  not  one  at  a  time,  Tmt  i^ 
battalions.  Admitted  evils  have  been  allowed 
to  grow  and  spread  root,  simply  because  a  de- 
mocracy cannot  attend  to  many  things  at  a  time. 
Like  the  green  hunter  who  fires  at  random  into 
a  bevy  of  quail  bursting  from  a  thicket  and 
brings  down  nothing,  the  people  became  con- 
fused and  at  first  listened  to  political  quacks 
rather  than  to  experts.  The  years  between 
1890  and  1905  were  nearly  wasted.  The  per- 
sistence among  us  of  distempers  we  do  not  yet 
see  how  to  cure  does  not  imply  tolerance  of 
them.  We  recognize  them  and  are  anxious. 


ft. 


124  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

They  are  here  in  spite  of  the  general  will. 
Many  maladies  have  already  been  remedied  and 
others  will  be  cured  as  soon  as  the  remedy  is 
^found.  It  is  in  the  nature  of  democracy  not  to 
nip  evils  in  the  bud,  but  to  attack  them  only 
after  they  have  waxed  big  enough  and  mischie- 
vous enough  to  arrest  popular  attention. 

Then,  too,  one  thinks  longer  before  cutting  a 
cataract  off  the  eye  than  before  opening  an 
abscess.  In  respect  to  a  plain  wrong  like 
peonage,  the  public  lottery,  race-track  gambling, 
railroad  discrimination  among  shippers,  loan- 
shark  extortion,  tax-dodging,  vote-buying,  pub- 
lic-land frauds,  etc.,  the  public  has  demanded 
action  as  soon  as  it  realized  what  was  going  on. 
But  evils  like  low  wages,  " speeding  up,"  Sun- 
day work,  industrial  conflicts,  crushing  of  trade- 
unionism,  combination  of  competing  concerns, 
dealing  in  " futures,"  waste  of  natural  re- 
sources, and  the  growth  of  tenancy  are  con- 
nected with  vital  economic  organs  or  processes, 
and  the  people  hesitate  to  call  for  the  use  of  the 
knife  lest  awkward  surgery  injure  the  system 
of  production  and  distribution.  The  people 
fear  lest  the  attempt  to  extirpate  certain  nox- 
ious growths  will  do  more  harm  than  good.  Or 
else  they  are  bewildered  by  conflicting  advice. 


DEMOCRACY  125 

Thus  for  years  Mr.  Bryan,  leader  of  the  Demo-      / 
cratic  Party,  insisted  that  all ' '  trusts ' '  are  bad, 
Mr.  Roosevelt,  leader  of  the  Republican  Party,     / 
held  that  some  are  good  and  some  bad,  while 
Mr.  Debs,  on  behalf  of  the  Socialist  Party,  pro- 
claimed them  inevitable,  and  good  in  case  the 
public  owns  them. 

The  irresistible  power  of  the  people,  once  they 
are  aroused,  is  shown  by  the  fate  that  befell 
the  railroad  "  magnates. "  Until  about  twelve 
years  ago  the  consolidation  of  lines  into  great 
systems  and  the  linking  up  of  their  management 
with  big  industrial  and  banking-interests  was 
creating  real  railway-empires.  In  1904  a  ma- 
jority of  the  boards  of  directors  of  all  important 
roads  east  of  the  Mississippi  River  could  be 
selected  from  a  group  of  thirty-five  persons. 
At  his  death  the  magnate  Harriman  controlled 
twenty-five  thousand  miles  of  railway  and  had 
large  influence  over  fifty  thousand  miles  of  other 
railway.  Railway  management  had  become  a 
colossal  and  ruthless  game,  in  which  the  rights 
of  small  shippers  and  small  investors  were  ig- 
nored. 

Owing  to  the  decisions  of  jealous  courts,  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission  had  been  re- 
duced to  virtual  impotence.  But  in  1903  the 


126  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

Elkins  Act  struck  at  secret  and  discriminating 
rates.  The  merger  of  competing  roads  was 
held  unlawful  in  1904.  In  1906  the  Hepburn 
Act  separated  transportation  from  other  busi- 
ness, gave  the  Commission  rate-making  powers, 
and  widened  its  jurisdiction.  The  next  year 
there  was  a  great  outburst  of  railroad-curbing 
by  the  states  and  more  than  three  hundred  rail- 
road measures  were  passed.  Two  years  later 
forty-one  state  legislatures  enacted  nearly  seven 
hundred  laws  affecting  railroads.  The  next 
year,  the  Mann-Elkins  Act  gave  yet  more  power 
to  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission.  In 
1913  Congress  provided  for  a  physical  valuation 
of  railway  property  to  obtain  a  basis  for  just 
rates.  Five  years  later  the  government  took 
over  the  railroads  as  a  war  measure  and  their 
magnates,  lawyers,  and  lobbyists  vanished  from 
the  scene.  Thus  in  the  brief  period  of  twelve 
years  the  proud  overlords  of  commerce  have 
been  shorn  of  their  power.  If  the  "trusts" 
have  not  been  brought  to  their  knees  in  like 
fashion,  it  is  not  from  want  of  power  but  only 
because  the  leaders  of  opinion  have  not  been 
clear  as  to  the  course  that  ought  to  be  followed. 
The  Socialist  may  insist  that  the  working  peo- 
ple of  America  are  benighted  or  prejudiced  or 


/*-<&***+•-  --  ^--fc 

DEMOCRACY  ' 
**    *-~    h^v*^+~'*^~*~~' 

deceived.  He  may  declare  them  blind  to  their 
true  interest.  But  he  cannot  truthfully  say  that 
they  lack  the  power  to  better  their  conditions. 
The  courts  may  stand  in  their  way  for  a  while. 
A  Constitution  which  can  be  amended  only  by 
three  fourths  of  the  states  affords  some  shelter 
to  a  large  minority.  Nevertheless,  a  candid 
man  must  recognize  that  the  social  order  in 
America  is  what  it  is,  not  essentially  because  of 
the  resistance  of  courts  and  Constitution,  but 
because,  as  yet,  the  great  majority  of  the  people 
do  not  will  some  other  social  order. 

Since  this  is  so,  the  unpardonable  sin  in  a 
would-be  reformer  is  impatience.  In  ordinary 
times  no  serious  obstacle  exists  to  agitating  on 
behalf  of  what  one  believes  to  be  improvements 
in  our  laws  and  institutions.  Already  eight  of 
the  twelve  demands  of  the  People's  Party  in 
1892 — which  were  then  greeted  with  jeers  by  the 
great  majority — have  become  law.  There  is, 
therefore,  no  excuse  for  advocating  violence  as 
a  short  cut  to  reforms.  Where  there  is  a  free 
course  for  ideas,  the  radical  who  will  not  wait 
on  the  slow  process  of  persuasion  is  no  friend 
of  democracy.  He  is  no  better  than  the  rich 
man  who  would  throttle  free  speech  because  he 
does  not  trust  the  people.  Big  evils  are  to  be 


128  WHAT  IS  AMERICA? 

removed,  but  the  man  who  would  force  reform 
by  means  of  a  resolute  minority  is  morally  on 
a  level  with  the  Prussian  Junker. 

In  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred,  minor- 
ity rule  means  government  by  the  propertied 
class  to  the  exclusion  of  the  mass.  It  is  there- 
fore dead  against  the  permanent  interest  of  the 
toilers  to  put  through  any  reform,  no  matter 
how  excellent,  by  means  of  a  minority.  The 
American  principle  that  the  will  of  the  major- 
ity should  prevail,  and  that  if  a  certain  minority 
has  the  right  idea  it  will  be  able  in  time  to  make 
itself  the  majority,  is  the  only  safe  principle  to 
follow.  In  the  end,  the  welfare  of  the  people 
will  be  advanced  more  speedily  on  this  principle 
than  on  any  other.  If  a  determined  active  mi- 
nority snatches  an  advantage  for  the  people  by 
a  sudden  stroke,  there  will  soon  be  a  reaction 
which  will  sweep  it  all  away.  So,  in  the  long 
"run,  that  method  of  hurrying  social  progress 
does  not  pay.  The  true  friend  of  the  people  is 
he  who  gets  out  into  the  arena  and  battles  stub- 
bornly for  his  ideas,  who  takes  political  defeat 
good  naturedly,  who  comes  up  smiling  for  the 
next  round,  and  who  perseveres  until  he  has 
won  over  the  majority  or  sees  that  he  has  been 
in  the  wrong. 


APPENDIX  A 

A  classic  statement  of  eighteenth-century 
political  democracy  is  found  in  the  Virginia  Bill 
of  Rights  adopted  just  prior  to  the  Declaration 
of  Independence.  In  the  light  of  later  experi- 
ence we  find  this  statement  lacking, — 

1  In  recognition  of  other  menaces  to  popular 
freedom  than  the  misuse  of  the  powers  of 
government.     The   framers  knew  nothing 
of  railroads,  public  utilities,  large  indus- 
trial      enterprises,       corporations,       and 
"trusts,"  and  hence  could  not  foresee  that 
one  day  governmental  authority  would  be 
invoked  to  protect  the  consumer,  the  pa- 
tron, the  "independent"  enterprise,  and 
the  employee. 

2  In  appreciation  (see  Sections  5  and  13)  of 
the  need  of  special  training  and  security  of 
tenure  in  the  civil  and  military  services  as 
well  as  in  the  judiciary. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  statement  recognized 
certain  truths  which  too  often  have  been  lost 
sight  of: 

129 


APPENDIX 

Voting  should  be  reserved  for  those  who 
"have  sufficient  evidence  of  a  permanent 
common  interest  with,  and  attachment  to, 
the  community."  This  surely  is  more  rea- 
sonable than  extending  it  to  every  one  who 
is  twenty-one  years  of  age,  even  if  he  be 
half-witted,  unable  to  read,  or  an  habitual 
aw-breaker.  The  wholesale  granting  of 
suffrage  to  the  freed  negroes  in  1870  had 
bad  results,  as  had  also  the  over-easy 
naturalization  of  the  foreign-born  until  the 
Federal  Law  of  1906. 
2  Democracy  summons  the  citizen  to  exercise 
the  virtues  of  moderation  and  self-control. 
If  one's  vote  reflects  one's  ordinary  self, 
very  likely  it  will  be  a  bad  vote.  Moral  ef- 
fort is  called  for.  The  good  citizen  will  put 
aside  his  passions,  prejudices,  partisanship, 
and  selfishness,  just  as  the  upright  judge 
puts  aside  his  private  feelings  and  inter- 
ests. 


VIRGINIA  BIIL  OF  BIGHTS— 1776  * 

A  declaration  of  rights  made  by  the  representatives 
of  the  good  people  of  Virginia,  assembled  in  full 

1  This  declaration  of  rights  was  framed  by  a  convention, 
composed  of  forty-five  members  of  the  colonial  House  of  Bur- 


APPENDIX  131 

and  free  convention;  which  rights  do  pertain  to 
them  and  their  posterity,  as  the  basis  and  founda- 
tion of  government. 

SECTION  1.  That  all  men  are  by  nature  equally  free 
and  independent,  and  have  certain  inherent  rights, 
of  which,  when  they  enter  into  a  state  of  society,  they 
cannot,  by  any  compact,  deprive  or  divest  their  pos- 
terity ;  namely  the  enjoyment  of  life  and  liberty,  with 
the  means  of  acquiring  and  possessing  property,  and 
pursuing  and  obtaining  happiness  and  safety. 

SEC.  2.  That  all  power  is  vested  in,  and  conse- 
quently derived  from,  the  people;  that  magistrates 
are  their  trustees  and  servants,  and  at  all  times  amen- 
able to  them. 

SEC.  3.  That  government  is,  or  ought  to  be,  insti- 
tuted for  the  common  benefit,  protection,  and  security 
of  the  people,  nation,  or  community;  of  all  the  vari- 
ous modes  and  forms  of  government  that  is  best  which 
is  capable  of  producing  the  greatest  degree  of  happi- 
ness and  safety,  and  is  most  effectually  secured  against 
the  danger  of  maladministration ;  and  that,  when  any 
government  shall  be  found  inadequate  or  contrary  to 
these  purposes,  a  majority  of  the  community  hath  an 
indubitable,  inalienable,  and  indefeasible  right  to  re- 
form, alter,  or  abolish  it,  in  such  manner  as  shall  be 
judged  most  conducive  to  the  public  weal. 

SEC.  4.  That  no  man,  or  set  of  men,  are  entitled  to 
exclusive  or  separate  emoluments  or  privileges  from 
the  community,  but  in  consideration  of  public  serv- 

gesses,  which  met  at  Williamsburgh,  May  6,  1776,  and  adopted 
this  declaration  June  12,  1776. 


132  APPENDIX 

ices;  which,  not  being  descendible,  neither  ought  the 
offices  of  magistrate,  legislator  or  judge  to  be  heredi- 
tary. 

SEC.  5.  That  the  legislative  and  executive  powers 
of  the  State  should  be  separate  and  distinct  from  the 
judiciary ;  and  that  the  members  of  the  two  first  may 
be  restrained  from  oppression,  by  feeling  and  par- 
ticipating the  burdens  of  the  people,  they  should,  at 
fixed  periods,  be  reduced  to  a  private  station,  return 
into  that  body  from  which  they  were  originally  taken, 
and  the  vacancies  be  supplied  by  frequent,  certain, 
and  regular  elections,  in  which  all,  or  any  part  of  the 
former  members,  to  be  again  eligible,  or  ineligible,  as 
the  laws  shall  direct. 

SEC.  6.  That  elections  of  members  to  serve  as  rep- 
resentatives of  the  people,  in  assembly,  ought  to  be 
free;  and  that  all  men  having  sufficient  evidence  of 
permanent  common  interest  with,  and  attachment  to, 
the  community,  have  the  right  of  suffrage,  and  can- 
not be  taxed  or  deprived  of  their  property  for  public 
uses,  without  their  own  consent,  or  that  of  their  rep- 
resentatives so  elected,  nor  bound  by  any  law  to  which 
they  have  not,  in  like  manner,  assented  for  the  public 
good. 

SEC.  7.  That  all  power  of  suspending  laws,  or  the 
execution  of  laws,  by  any  authority,  without  consent 
of  the  representatives  of  the  people,  is  injurious  to 
their  rights,  and  ought  not  to  be  exercised. 

SEC.  8.  That  in  all  capital  or  criminal  prosecutions 
a  man  hath  a  right  to  demand  the  cause  and  nature  of 
his  accusation,  to  be  confronted  with  the  accusers  and 


APPENDIX  133 

witnesses,  to  call  for  evidence  in  his  favor,  and  to  a 
speedy  trial  by  an  impartial  jury  of  twelve  men  of 
his  vicinage,  without  whose  unanimous  consent  he 
cannot  be  found  guilty;  nor  can  he  be  compelled  to 
give  evidence  against  himself;  that  no  man  be  de- 
prived of  his  liberty,  except  by  the  law  of  the  land  or 
the  judgment  of  his  peers. 

SEC.  9.  That  excessive  bail  ought  not  to  be  required, 
nor  excessive  fines  imposed,  nor  cruel  and  unusual 
punishments  inflicted. 

SEC.  10.  That  general  warrants,  whereby  an  officer 
or  messenger  may  be  commanded  to  search  suspected 
places  without  evidence  of  a  fact  committed,  or  to 
seize  any  person  or  persons  not  named,  or  whose  of- 
fence is  not  particularly  described  and  supported  by 
evidence,  are  grievous  and  oppressive,  and  ought  not 
to  be  granted. 

SEC.  11.  That  in  controversies  respecting  property, 
and  in  suits  between  man  and  man,  the  ancient  trial 
by  Jury  is  preferable  to  any  other,  and  ought  to  be 
held  sacred. 

SEC.  12.  That  the  freedom  of  the  press  is  one  of  the 
great  bulwarks  of  liberty,  and  can  never  be  restrained 
but  by  despotic  governments. 

SEC.  13.  That  a  well-regulated  militia,  composed  of 
the  body  of  the  people,  trained  to  arms,  is  the  proper, 
natural,  and  safe  defence  of  a  free  State ;  that  stand- 
ing armies,  in  time  of  peace,  should  be  avoided,  as 
dangerous  to  liberty;  and  that  in  all  cases  the  mili- 
tary should  be  under  strict  subordination  to,  and 
governed  by,  the  civil  power. 


134  APPENDIX 

SEC.  14.  That  the  people  have  a  right  to  uniform 
government;  and,  therefore,  that  no  government 
separate  from,  or  independent  of  the  government  of 
Virginia,  ought  to  be  erected  or  established  within 
the  limits  thereof. 

SEC.  15.  That  no  free  government,  or  the  blessings 
of  liberty,  can  be  preserved  to  any  people,  but  by  a 
firm  adherence  to  justice,  moderation,  temperance, 
frugality,  and  virtue,  and  by  frequent  recurrence  to 
fundamental  principles. 

SEC.  16.  That  religion,  or  the  duty  which  we  owe 
to  our  Creator,  and  the  manner  of  discharging  it,  can 
be  directed  only  by  reason  and  conviction,  not  by  force 
or  violence;  and  therefore  all  men  are  equally  en- 
titled to  the  free  exercise  of  religion,  according  to  the 
dictates  of  conscience ;  and  that  it  is  the  mutual  duty 
of  all  to  practice  Christian  forbearance,  love,  and 
charity  toward  each  other. 


APPENDIX  A 
[THE  CONSTITUTION 

OF   THE 

UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA] 

WE  THE  PEOPLE  of  the  United  States,  in  Order  to  form  a 
more  perfect  Union,  establish  Justice,  insure  domestic 
Tranquillity,  provide  for  the  common  defence,  promote 
the  general  "Welfare,  and  secure  the  Blessings  of  Liberty 
to  ourselves  and  our  Posterity,  do  ordain  and  establish, 
this  CONSTITUTION  for  the  United  States  of  America. 

AETICLE  I 

SECTION  1.  All  legislative  Powers  herein  granted  shall  be 
vested  in  a  Congress  of  the  United  States,  which  shall  con- 
sist of  a  Senate  and  House  of  Eepresentatives. 

SECTION  2.  The  House  of  Representatives  shall  be  com- 
posed of  Members  chosen  every  second  Year  by  the  People 
of  the  several  States,  and  the  Electors  in  each  State  shall 
have  the  Qualifications  requisite  for  Electors  of  the  most 
numerous  Branch  of  the  State  Legislature. 

No  Person  shall  be  a  Representative  who  shall  not  have 
attained  to  the  age  of  twenty-five  Years,  and  been  seven 
Years  a  Citizen  of  the  United  States,  and  who  shall  not, 
when  elected,  be  an  Inhabitant  of  that  State  in  which  he 
shall  be  chosen. 

X35 


136  APPENDIX 

Eepresentatives  and  direct  Taxes  shall  be  apportioned 
among  the  several  States  which  may  be  included  within  this 
Union,  according  to  their  respective  Numbers,  which  shall 
be  determined  by  adding  to  the  whole  Number  of  free 
Persons,  including  those  bound  to  Service  for  a  Term  of 
Years,  and  excluding  Indians  not  taxed,  three  fifths  of  all 
other  Persons.1  The  actual  Enumeration  shall  be  made 
within  three  Years  after  the  first  Meeting  of  the  Congress 
of  the  United  States,  and  within  every  subsequent  Term 
of  ten  Years,  in  such  Manner  as  they  shall  by  Law  direct. 
The  Number  of  Eepresentatives  shall  not  exceed  one  for 
every  thirty  Thousand,  but  each  State  shall  have  at  Least 
one  Eepresentative ;  and  until  such  enumeration  shall  be 
made,  the  State  of  New  Hampshire  shall  be  entitled  to 
chuse  three,  Massachusetts  eight,  Ehode-Island  and  Provi- 
dence Plantations  one,  Connecticut  five,  New  York  six, 
New  Jersey  four,  Pennsylvania  eight,  Delaware  one,  Mary- 
land six,  Virginia  ten,  North  Carolina  five,  South  Carolina 
five,  and  Georgia  three. 

"When  vacancies  happen  in  the  Eepresentation  from  any 
State,  the  Executive  Authority  thereof  shall  issue  Writs 
of  Election  to  fill  such  Vacancies. 

The  House  of  Eepresentatives  shall  chuse  their  Speaker 
and  other  Officers;  and  shall  have  the  sole  Power  of  Im- 
peachment. 

SECTION  3.  The  Senate  of  the  United  States  shall  be  com- 
posed of  two  Senators  from  each  State,  chosen  by  the  Legis- 
lature thereof,  for  six  Years;  and  each  Senator  shall  have 
one  Vote.2 

Immediately  after  they  shall  be  assembled  in  Conse- 
quence of  the  first  Election,  they  shall  be  divided  as  equally 
as  may  be  into  three  Classes.  The  Seats  of  the  Senators  of 
the  first  Class  shall  be  vacated  at  the  Expiration  of  the 
second  Year,  of  the  second  Class  at  the  Expiration  of  the 

*The  clause  in  italics  superseded  by  the  13th  and  14th  Amendments. 
'This  paragraph  was  superseded  by  the  17th  Amendment. 


APPENDIX  137 

fourth.  Year,  and  of  the  third  Class  at  the  Expiration  of 
the  sixth  Year,  so  that  one  third  may  be  chosen  every 
second  Year;  and  if  Yacancies  happen  by  Resignation,  or 
otherwise,  during  the  Eecess  of  the  Legislature  of  any 
State,  the  Executive  thereof  may  make  temporary  Ap- 
pointments until  the  next  Meeting  of  the  Legislature,  which 
shall  then  fill  such  Vacancies. 

No  Person  shall  be  a  Senator  who  shall  not  have  attained 
to  the  age  of  thirty  Years,  and  been  nine  Years  a  citizen 
of  the  United  States,  and  who  shall  not,  when  elected, 
be  an  Inhabitant  of  that  State  for  which  he  shall  be 
chosen. 

The  Vice  President  of  the  United  States  shall  be  Presi- 
dent of  the  Senate,  but  shall  have  no  Vote,  unless  they  be 
equally  divided. 

The  Senate  shall  chuse  their  other  Officers,  and  also  a 
President  pro  tempore,  in  the  Absence  of  the  Vice  Presi- 
dent, or  when  he  shall  exercise  the  Office  of  President  of 
the  United  States. 

The  Senate  shall  have  the  sole  Power  to  try  all  Impeach- 
ments. When  sitting  for  that  Purpose,  they  shall  be  on 
Oath  or  Affirmation.  When  the  President  of  the  United 
States  is  tried,  the  Chief  Justice  shall  preside :  And  no  Per- 
son shall  be  convicted  without  the  Concurrence  of  two 
thirds  of  the  Members  present. 

Judgment  in  Cases  of  Impeachment  shall  not  extend  fur- 
ther than  to  removal  from  Office,  and  disqualification  to 
hold  and  enjoy  any  Office  of  honor,  Trust  or  Profit  under 
the  United  States:  but  the  Party  convicted  shall  neverthe- 
less be  liable  and  subject  to  indictment,  Trial,  Judgment 
and  Punishment,  according  to  Law. 

SECTION  4.  The  Times,  Places  and  Manner  of  holding  Elec- 
tions for  Senators  and  Representatives,  shall  be  prescribed 
in  each  State  by  the  Legislature  thereof;  but  the  Congress 
may  at  any  time  by  Law  make  or  alter  such  Regulations, 
except  as  to  the  Places  of  chusing  Senators. 


138  APPENDIX 

The  Congress  shall  assemble  at  least  once  in  every  Year, 
and  such  Meeting  shall  be  on  the  first  Monday  in  December, 
unless  they  shall  by  Law  appoint  a  different  Day. 

SECTION  5.  Each  House  shall  be  the  Judge  of  the  Elections, 
Returns  and  Qualifications  of  its  own  Members,  and  a  Ma- 
jority of  each  shall  constitute  a  Quorum  to  do  business; 
but  a  smaller  Number  may  adjourn  from  day  to  day,  and 
may  be  authorized  to  compel  the  Attendance  of  absent 
Members,  in  such  Manner,  and  under  such  Penalties  as  each 
House  may  provide. 

Each  House  may  determine  the  Rules  of  its  Proceedings, 
punish  its  Members  for  disorderly  Behaviour,  and,  with  the 
Concurrence  of  two  thirds,  expel  a  Member. 

Each  House  shall  keep  a  Journal  of  its  Proceedings,  and 
from  time  to  time  publish  the  same,  excepting  such  Parts 
as  may  in  their  Judgment  require  Secrecy;  and  the  Yeas 
and  Nays  of  the  Members  of  either  House  on  any  question 
shall,  at  the  desire  of  one  fifth  of  those  Present,  be  entered 
on  the  Journal. 

Neither  House,  during  the  Session  of  Congress,  shall, 
without  the  Consent  of  the  other,  adjourn  for  more  than 
three  days,  nor  to  any  other  Place  than  that  in  which  the 
two  Houses  shall  be  sitting. 

SECTION  6.  The  Senators  and  Representatives  shall  receive 
a  Compensation  for  their  Services,  to  be  ascertained  by 
Law,  and  paid  out  of  the  Treasury  of  the  United  States. 
They  shall  in  all  Cases,  except  Treason,  Felony  and  Breach 
of  the  Peace,  be  privileged  from  Arrest  during  their  At- 
tendance at  the  Session  of  their  respective  Houses,  and  in 
going  to  and  returning  from  the  same ;  and  for  any  Speech 
or  Debate  in  either  House,  they  shall  not  be  questioned 
in  any  other  Place. 

No  Senator  or  Representative  shall,  during  the  Time  for 
which  he  was  elected,  be  appointed  to  any  civil  Office  under 
the  Authority  of  the  United  States,  which  shall  have  been 
created,  or  the  Emoluments  whereof  shall  have  been  en- 


APPENDIX  139 

creased  during  such  time ;  and  no  Person  holding  any  Office 
under  the  United  States,  shall  be  a  Member  of  either  House 
during  his  Continuance  in  Office. 

SECTION  7.  All  Bills  for  raising  Revenue  shall  originate  in 
the  House  of  Representatives ;  but  the  Senate  may  propose 
or  concur  with  Amendments  as  on  other  Bills. 

Every  Bill  which  shall  have  passed  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives and  the  Senate,  shall,  before  it  becomes  a  Law, 
be  presented  to  the  President  of  the  United  States;  If  he 
approve  he  shall  sign  it,  but  if  not  he  shall  return  it,  with 
his  Objections  to  that  House  in  which  it  shall  have  origi- 
nated, who  shall  enter  the  Objections  at  large  on  their 
Journal,  and  proceed  to  reconsider  it.  If  after  such  Recon- 
sideration two  thirds  of  that  House  shall  agree  to  pass 
the  Bill,  it  shall  be  sent,  together  with  the  Objections,  to 
the  other  House,  by  which  it  shall  likewise  be  reconsidered, 
and  if  approved  by  two  thirds  of  that  House,  it  shall  be- 
come a  Law.  But  in  all  such  Cases  the  Votes  of  both  Houses 
shall  be  determined  by  yeas  and  nays,  and  the  Names  of 
the  Persons  voting  for  and  against  the  Bill  shall  be  en- 
tered on  the  Journal  of  each  House  respectively.  If  any 
Bill  shall  not  be  returned  by  the  President  within  ten  Days 
(Sundays  excepted)  after  it  shall  have  been  presented  to 
him,  the  Same  shall  be  a  Law,  in  like  Manner  as  if  he  had 
signed  it,  unless  the  Congress  by  their  Adjournment  pre- 
vents its  Return,  in  which  Case  it  shall  not  be  a  Law. 

Every  Order,  Resolution,1  or  Vote  to  which  the  Concur- 
rence of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  may  be 
necessary  (except  on  a  question  of  Adjournment)  shall  be 
presented  to  the  President  of  the  United  States ;  and  before 
the  Same  shall  take  Effect,  shall  be  approved  by  him,  or 
being  disapproved  by  him,  shall  be  repassed  by  two  thirds 
of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives,  according  to 
the  Rules  and  Limitations  prescribed  in  the  Case  of  a  Bill. 

•Resolutions  of  Congress  proposing  amendments  to  the  Constitution 
do  not  require  the  assent  of  the  President. 


140  APPENDIX 

SECTION  8.  The  Congress  shall  have  Power  to  lay  and  col- 
lect Taxes,  Duties,  Imposts  and  Excises,  to  pay  the  Debts 
and  provide  for  the  common  Defence  and  general  Welfare 
of  the  United  States;  but  all  Duties,  Imposts  and  Excises 
shall  be  uniform  throughout  the  United  States ; 

To  borrow  money  on  the  credit  of  the  United  States ; 

To  regulate  Commerce  with  foreign  Nations,  and  among 
the  several  States,  and  with  the  Indian  Tribes ; 

To  establish  an  uniform  Rule  of  Naturalization,  and 
uniform  Laws  on  the  subject  of  Bankruptcies 1  throughout 
the  United  States; 

To  coin  Money,  regulate  the  Value  thereof,  and  of  foreign 
Coin,  and  fix  the  Standard  of  Weights  and  Measures; 

To  provide  for  the  Punishment  of  counterfeiting  the 
Securities  and  current  Coin  of  the  United  States ; 

To  establish  Post  Offices  and  post  Roads ; 

To  promote  the  Progress  of  Science  and  useful  Arts,  by 
securing  for  limited  Times  to  Authors  and  Inventors  the 
exclusive  Bight  to  their  respective  Writings  and  Discov- 
eries ; a 

To  constitute  Tribunals  inferior  to  the  supreme  Court; 

To  define  and  punish  Piracies  and  Felonies  committed 
on  the  high  Seas,  and  Offences  against  the  Law  of  Nations ; 

To  declare  War,  grant  Letters  of  Marque  and  Reprisal, 
and  make  Rules  concerning  Captures  on  Land  and  Water; 

*  A  bankrupt  law  enables  a  person  who  is  unable  to  pay  all  his  debts 
to  divide  what  properly  he  has  among  his  creditors  proportionately  and 
to  be  discharged  from  legal  obligation  to  make  further  payment.    Con- 
gress has  absolute  power  in  the  matter  of  bankruptcy,  but  it  has  not 
exercised    this   power    continuously.     The  present  bankrupt  law  waa 
passed  in  1898.     In  the  absence  of  legislation  by  Congress  the  State 
regulates  the  subject  of  bankruptcy. 

*  An  author  may  secure  a  copyright  on  a  book  by  sending  to  the  libra- 
rian of  Congress  at  Washington  a  copy  of  the  title-page  and  two  copies 
of  the  book  on  or  before  the  day  of  publication.     The  copyright  gives 
an  exclusive  right  to  sell  for  twenty-eight  years,  a  period  which  upon 
application  may  be  extended  twenty-eight  years.     A  patent  secures  to 
an  inventor  the  exclusive  right  to  manufacture  and  sell  his  invention 
for  seventeen  years.     Patents  are  secured  by  sending  to  the  Commis- 
sioner of  Patents  at  Washington  a  working  model  of  the  thing  invented. 


APPENDIX  141 

To  raise  and  support  Annies,  but  no  Appropriation  of 
Money  to  that  Use  shall  be  for  a  longer  Term  than  two 
Years ; 

To  provide  and  maintain  a  Navy; 

To  make  Rules  for  the  Government  and  Regulation  of 
the  land  and  naval  Forces ; 

To  provide  for  calling  forth  the  Militia  to  execute  the 
Laws  of  the  Union,  suppress  Insurrections  and  repel  In- 
vasions ; 

To  provide  for  organizing,  arming,  and  disciplining,  the 
Militia,  and  for  governing  such  Part  of  them  as  may  be 
employed  in  the  Service  of  the  United  States,  reserving 
to  the  States  respectively  the  Appointment  of  the  officers, 
and  the  Authority  of  training  the  Militia  according  to  the 
discipline  prescribed  by  Congress; 

To  exercise  exclusive  Legislation  in  all  Cases  whatso- 
ever, over  such  District  (not  exceeding  ten  Miles  square) 
as  may,  by  Cession  of  particular  States,  and  the  Accep- 
tance of  Congress,  become  the  Seat  of  the  Government  and 
of  the  United  States,  and  to  exercise  like ,  Authority  over 
all  Places  purchased  by  the  Consent  of  the  Legislature  of 
the  State  in  which  the  Same  shall  be,  for  the  Erection  of 
Forts,  Magazines,  Arsenals,  dock- Yards,  and  other  need- 
ful Buildings; — And 

To  make  all  Laws  which  shall  be  necessary  and  proper 
for  carrying  into  Execution  the  foregoing  Powers,  and  all 
other  Powers  vested  by  this  Constitution  in  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States,  or  in  any  Department  or  Officer 
thereof. 

[SECTION  9.  The  Migration  or  Importation  of  such  Persons 
as  any  of  the  States  now  existing  shall  think  proper  to 
admit,  shall  not  be  prohibited  by  the  Congress  prior  to  the 
Year  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  eight,  but  a  Tax 
or  duty  ma>  be  imposed  on  such  Importation,  not  exceed- 
ing ten  dollars  for  each  Person.]1 

1This  clause  has  no  longer  any  significance. 


142  APPENDIX 

The  Privilege  of  the  Writ  of  Habeas  Corpus  shall  not  be 
suspended,  unless  when  in  Cases  of  Rebellion  or  Invasion 
the  public  Safety  may  require  it. 

No  Bill  of  Attainder  or  ex  post  facto  Law  shall  be  passed. 

No  Capitation,  or  other  direct,  Tax  shall  be  laid,  unless 
in  Proportion  to  the  Census  or  Enumeration  herein  before 
directed  to  be  taken. 

No  Tax  or  Duty  shall  be  laid  on  Articles  exported  from 
any  State. 

No  Preference  shall  be  given  by  any  Regulation  of  Com- 
merce or  Revenue  to  the  Ports  of  one  State  over  those  of 
another:  nor  shall  Vessels  bound  to,  or  from,  one  State,  be 
obliged  to  enter,  clear,  or  pay  Duties  in  another. 

No  Money  shall  be  drawn  from  the  Treasury,  but  in  Con- 
sequence of  Appropriations  made  by  Law;  and  a  regular 
Statement  and  Account  of  the  Receipts  and  Expenditures 
of  all  public  Money  shall  be  published  from  time  to  time. 

No  Title  of  Nobility  shall  be  granted  by  the  United 
States :  And  no  Person  holding  any  Office  of  Profit  or  Trust 
under  them,  shall,  without  the  Consent  of  the  Congress, 
accept  of  any  present,  Emolument,  Office,  or  Title,  of  any 
kind  whatever,  from  any  King,  Prince,  or  foreign  State. 

SECTION  10.  No  State  shall  enter  into  any  Treaty,  Alli- 
ance, or  Confederation;  grant  Letters  of  Marque  and  Re- 
prisal; coin  Money;  emit  Bills  of  Credit;  make  any  Thing 
but  gold  and  silver  Coin  a  Tender  in  Payment  of  Debts; 
pass  any  Bill  of  Attainder,  ex  post  facto  Law,  or  Law  im- 
pairing the  Obligation  of  Contracts,  or  grant  &ny  Title 
of  Nobility. 

No  State  shall,  without  the  Consent  of  the  Congress,  lay 
any  Imposts  or  Duties  on  Imports  or  Exports,  except  what 
may  be  absolutely  necessary  for  executing  its  inspection 
Laws:  and  the  net  Produce  of  all  Duties  and  Imposts,  laid 
by  any  State  on  Imports  or  Exports,  shall  be  for  the  Use 
of  the  Treasury  of  the  United  States;  and  all  such  .Laws 
ghall  be  subject  to  the  Revision  and  Control  of  Congress. 


APPENDIX  143 

No  State  shall,  without  the  Consent  of  Congress,  lay  any 
Duty  of  Tonnage,  keep  Troops,  or  Ships  of  War  in  time 
of  Peace,  enter  into  any  Agreement  or  Compact  with  an- 
other State,  or  with  a  foreign  Power,  or  engage  in  War 
unless  actually  invaded,  or  in  such  imminent  Danger  as 
will  not  admit  of  delay. 


ARTICLE  H 

SECTION  1.  The  executive  Power  shall  be  vested  in  a  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  of  America.  He  shall  hold  his 
Office  during  the  Term  of  four  Years,  and,  together  with 
the  Vice  President,  chosen  for  the  same  Term,  be  elected, 
as  follows 

Each  State  shall  appoint,  in  such  Manner  as  the  Legisla- 
ture thereof  may  direct,  a  Number  of  Electors,  equal  to  the 
whole  Number  of  Senators  and  Representatives  to  which 
the  State  may  be  entitled  in  the  Congress:  but  no  Senator 
or  Representatives,  or  Person  holding  an  Office  of  Trust  or 
Profit  under  the  United  States,  shall  be  appointed  an 
Elector. 

[The  Electors  shall  meet  in  their  respective  States,  and 
vote  by  ballot  for  two  Persons,  of  whom  one  at  least  shall 
not  be  an  Inhabitant  of  the  same  State  with  themselves. 
And  they  shall  make  a  List  of  all  the  Persons  voted  for, 
and  of  the  Number  of  Votes  for  each ;  which  List  they  shall 
sign  and  certify,  and  transmit  sealed  to  the  Seat  of  the 
Government  of  the  United  States,  directed  to  the  President 
of  the  Senate.  The  President  of  the  Senate  shall,  in  the 
Presence  of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives,  open 
all  the  Certificates,  and  the  Votes  shall  then  be  counted. 
The  Person  having  the  greatest  Number  of  Votes  shall  be 
the  President,  if  such  Number  be  a  Majority  of  the  whole 
Number  of  Electors  appointed;  and  if  there  be  more  than 
one  who  have  such  a  Majority,  and  have  an  equal  Number 
of  Votes,  then  the  House  of  Representatives  shall  immedi- 


144  APPENDIX 

ately  clrase  by  Ballot  one  of  them  for  President;  and  if 
no  Person  have  a  Majority,  then  from  the  five  highest  on 
the  List  the  said  House  shall  in  like  Manner  chuse  the  Presi- 
dent. But  in  chusing  the  President,  the  Votes  shall  be 
taken  by  States,  the  Representation  from  each  State  having 
one  Vote;  A  quorum  for  this  Purpose  shall  consist  of  a 
Member  or  Members  from  two  thirds  of  the  States,  and  a 
Majority  of  all  the  States  shall  be  necessary  to  a  Choice. 
In  every  Case,  after  the  Choice  of  the  President,  the  Per- 
son having  the  greatest  Number  of  Votes  of  the  Electors 
shall  be  the  Vice  President.  But  if  there  should  remain 
two  or  more  who  have  equal  Votes,  the  Senate  shall  chuse 
from  them  by  Ballot  the  Vice  President.]1 

The  Congress  may  determine  the  Time  of  chusing  the 
Electors,  and  the  Day  on  which  they  shall  give  their  Votes ; 
which  Day  shall  be  the-  same  throughout  the  United  States. 

No  Person  except  a.  natural  born  Citizen,  or  a  Citizen  of 
the  United  States,  at  the  time  of  the  Adoption  of  this  Con- 
stitution, shall  be  eligible  to  the  Office  of  President ;  neither 
shall  any  Person  be  eligible  to  that  Office  who  shall  not 
have  attained  to  the  Age  o£  thirty-five  Years,  and  been 
fourteen  Years  a  Resident  within  the  United  States. 

In  Case  of  the  Removal  of  the  President  from  Office,  or 
of  his  Death,.  Resignation,  or  Inability  to  discharge  the 
Powers  and  Duties  of  the  said  Office,  the  Same  shall  devolve 
on  the  Vice  President,  and  the  Congress  may  by  Law  pro- 
vide for  the  Case  of  Removal,  Death,  Resignation  or  In- 
ability, both  of  the  President  and  Vice  President,  declaring 
what  Officer  shall  then  act  as  President,  and  such  Officer 
shall  act  accordingly,  until  the  Disability  be  removed,  or 
a  President  shall  be  elected. 

The  President  shall,  at  stated  Times,  receive  for  his  Serv- 
ices, a  Compensation  which  shall  neither  be  increased  nor 
diminished  during  the  Period  for  which  he  shall  have  been 
elected,  and  he  shall  not  receive  within  that  Period  any 
other  Emolument  from  the  United  States,  or  any  of  them. 

1  This  paragraph  has  ^een  superseded  bj;  the  12th  amendment. 


APPENDIX  145 

Before  he  enter  on  the  Execution  of  his  Office,  he  shall 
take  the  following  Oath  or  Affirmation: — "I  do  solemnly 
swear  (or  affirm)  that  I  will  faithfully  execute  the  Office 
of  President  of  the  United  States,  and  will  to  the  hest  of 
my  Ability,  preserve,  protect  and  defend  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States." 


SECTION  2.  The  President  shall  be  Commander  in  Chief  of 
the  Army  and  Navy  of  the  United  States,  and  of  the  Militia 
of  the  several  States,  when  called  into  the  actual  Service 
of  the  United  States ;  he  may  require  the  Opinion,  in  writ- 
ing, of  the  principal  Officer  in  each  of  the  Executive  De- 
partments, upon  any  Subject  relating  to  the  Duties  of  their 
respective  Offices,  and  he  shall  have  Power  to  grant  Re- 
prieves and  Pardons  for  Offences  against  the  United  States, 
except  in  Cases  of  Impeachment. 

He  shall  have  Power,  by  and  with  the  Advice  and  Con- 
sent of  the  Senate,  to  make  Treaties,  provided  two  thirds 
of  the  Senators  present  concur;  and  he  shall  nominate, 
and  by  and  with  the  Advice  and  Consent  of  the  Senate, 
shall  appoint  Ambassadors,  other  public  Ministers  and  Con- 
suls, Judges  of  the  supreme  Court,  and  all  other  Officers 
of  the  United  States,  whose  Appointments  are  not  herein 
otherwise  provided  for,  and  which  shall  be  established  by 
Law:  but  the  Congress  may  by  Law  vest  the  Appointment 
of  such  inferior  Officers,  as  they  think  proper,  in  the  Presi- 
dent alone,  in  the  Courts  of  Law,  or  in  the  Heads  of  Depart- 
ments. 

The  President  shall  have  Power  to  fill  up  all  Vacancies 
that  may  happen  during  the  Recess  of  the  Senate,  by 
granting  Commissions  which  shall  expire  at  the  End  of 
their  next  Session. 

SECTION  3.  He  shall  from  time  to  time  give  to  the  Congress 
Information  of  the  State  of  the  Union,  and  recommend  to 
their  Consideration  such  Measures  as  he  shall  judge  neces- 


146  APPENDIX 

sary  and  expedient;  he  may,  on  extraordinary  Occasions, 
convene  both  Houses,  or  either  of  them,  and  in  Case  of 
Disagreement  between  them,  with  Eespect  to  the  tune  of 
Adjournment,  he  may  adjourn  them  to  such  Time  as  he 
shall  think  proper;  he  shall  receive  Ambassadors  and  other 
public  Ministers ;  he  shall  take  Care  that  the  Laws  be  faith- 
fully executed,  and  shall  Commission  all  the  Officers  of 
the  United  States. 

SECTION  4.  The  President,  Vice  President  and  all  civil 
Officers  of  the  United  States,  shall  be  removed  from  Office 
on  Impeachment  for,  and  Conviction  of,  Treason,  Bribery, 
or  other  high  Crimes  and  Misdemeanors. 


AETICLE  III 

SECTION  1.  The  judicial  Power  of  the  United  States,  shall 
be  vested  in  one  supreme  Court,  and  in  such  inferior  Courts 
as  the  Congress  may  from  time  to  time  ordain  and  estab- 
lish. The  Judges,  both  of  the  supreme  and  inferior  Courts, 
shall  hold  their  Offices  during  good  Behaviour,  and  shall, 
at  stated  Times,  receive  for  their  Services,  a  Compensation, 
which  shall  not  be  diminished  during  their  continuance 
in  Office. 

SECTION  2.  The  judicial  Power  shall  extend  to  all  Cases, 
in  Law  and  Equity,  arising  under  this  Constitution,  the 
Laws  of  the  United  States,  and  Treaties  made,  or  which 
shall  be  made,  under  their  Authority; — to  all  Cases  affect- 
ing Ambassadors,  other  public  Ministers  and  Consuls; — 
to  all  Cases  of  admiralty  and  maritime  Jurisdiction; — to 
Controversies  to  which  the  United  States  shall  be  a  Party; 
— to  Controversies  between  two  or  more  States; — between 
a  State  and  Citizens  of  another  State : 1 — between  Citizens 
of  different  States; — between  Citizens  of  the  same  State 

'This  clause  was  modified  by  the  llth  amendment  (p.  153). 


APPENDIX  147 

claiming  Lands  under  Grants  of  different  States,  and  be- 
tween a  State,  or  the  Citizens  thereof,  and  foreign  States, 
Citizens  or  Subjects. 

In  all  Cases  affecting  Ambassadors,  other  public  Minis- 
ters and  Consuls,  and  those  in  which  a  State  shall  be  Party, 
the  supreme  Court  shall  have  original  Jurisdiction.  In  all 
the  other  Cases  before  mentioned,  the  supreme  Court  shall 
have  appellate  Jurisdiction,  both  as  to  Law  and  Fact,  with 
such  Exceptions,  and  under  such  regulations  as  the  Con- 
gress shall  make. 

The  Trial  of  all  Crimes,  except  in  Cases  of  Impeach- 
ment, shall  be  by  Jury ;  and  such  Trial  shall  be  held  in  the 
State  where  the  said  Crimes  shall  have  been  committed; 
but  when  not  committed  within  any  State,  the  Trial  shall 
be  at  such  Place  or  Places  as  the  Congress  may  by  Law 
have  directed. 

SECTION  3.  Treason  against  the  United  States,  shall  con- 
sist only  in  levying  War  against  them,  or  in  adhering  to 
their  Enemies,  giving  them  Aid  and  Comfort.  No  Person 
shall  be  convicted  of  Treason  unless  on  the  Testimony  of 
two  "Witnesses  to  the  same  overt  Act,  or  on  Confession  in 
open  Court. 

The  Congress  shall  have  Power  to  declare  the  Punish- 
ment of  Treason,  but  no  Attainder  of  Treason  shall  work 
Corruption  of  Blood,  or  Forfeiture  except  during  the  Life 
of  the  Person  attainted. 


ARTICLE  IV 

SECTION  1.  Full  Faith  and  Credit  shall  be  given  in  each 
State  to  the  public  Acts,  Records,  and  judicial  Proceedings 
of  every  other  State.  And  the  Congress  may  by  general 
Laws  prescribe  the  Manner  in  which  such  Acts,  Records 
*»4  Proceedings  shall  be  proved,  and  the  Effect  thereof. 


148  APPENDIX 

SECTION  2.  The  Citizens  of  each  State  shall  be  entitled  to 
all  Privileges  and  Immunities  of  Citizens  in  the  several 
States. 

A  Person  charged  in  any  State  with  Treason,  Felony, 
or  other  Crime,  shall  on  Demand  of  the  executive  Authority 
of  the  State  from  which  he  fled,  be  delivered  up,  to  remove 
to  the  State  having  Jurisdiction  of  the  Crime. 

[No  Person  held  to  Service  or  Labour  in  one  State,  under 
the  Laws  thereof,  escaping  into  another,  shall,  in  Conse- 
quence of  any  Law  or  Eegulation  therein,  be  discharged 
from  such  Service  or  Labour,  but  shall  be  delivered  up  on 
Claim  of  the  Party  to  whom  such  Service  or  Labour  may 
be  due.]1 


SECTION  3.  New  States  may  be  admitted  by  the  Congress 
into  this  Union ;  but  no  new  State  shall  be  formed  or  erected 
within  the  Jurisdiction  of  any  other  State,  nor  any  State 
be  formed  by  the  Junction  of  two  or  more  States,  or  Parts 
of  States,  without  the  Consent  of  the  Legislatures  of  the 
States  concerned  as  well  as  of  the  Congress. 

The  Congress  shall  have  Power  to  dispose  of  and  make 
all  needful  Kules  and  Regulations  respecting  the  Territory 
or  other  Property  belonging  to  the  United  States ;  and  noth- 
ing in  this  Constitution  shall  be  so  construed  as  to  Preju- 
dice any  Claims  of  the  United  States,  or  of  any  particular 
State. 


SECTION  4.  The  United  States  shall  guarantee  to  every 
State  in  this  Union  a  Republican  Form  of  Government, 
and  shall  protect  each  of  them  against  Invasion;  and  on 
Application  of  the  Legislature,  or  of  the  Executive  (when 
the  Legislature  cannot  be  convened)  against  domestic  Vio- 
lence. 

1  Since  the  abolition  of  slavery  this  clause  has  had  no  significance. 


APPENDIX  149 


ARTICLE  V 

The  Congress,  whenever  two  thirds  of  both  Houses  shall 
deem  it  necessary,  shall  propose  Amendments  to  this  Con- 
stitution, or,  on  the  Application  of  the  Legislatures  of  two 
thirds  of  the  several  States,  shall  call  a  Convention  for 
proposing  Amendments,  which,  in  either  Case,  shall  be 
valid  to  all  Intents  and  Purposes,  as  Part  of  this  Constitu- 
tion, when  ratified  by  the  Legislatures  of  three  fourths  of 
the  several  States,  or  by  Conventions  in  three  fourths 
thereof,  as  the  one  or  the  other  Mode  of  Ratification  may 
be  proposed  by  the  Congress ;  Provided  that  no  Amendment 
which  may  be  made  prior  to  the  Year  One  thousand  eight 
hundred  and  eight  shall  in  any  Manner  affect  the  first  and 
fourth  Clauses  in  the  Ninth  Section  of  the  first  Article; 
and  that  no  State,  without  its  Consent,  shall  be  deprived 
of  its  equal  Suffrage  in  the  Senate. 


ARTICLE  VI 

All  Debts  contracted  and  Engagements  entered  into, 
before  the  Adoption  of  this  Constitution,  shall  be  as  valid 
against  the  United  States  under  this  Constitution,  as  under 
the  Confederation. 

This  Constitution,  and  the  Laws  of  the  United  States 
which  shall  be  made  in  Pursuance  thereof;  and  all  Treaties 
made,  or  which  shall  be  made,  under  the  Authority  of  the 
United  States,  shall  be  the  supreme  Law  of  the  Land;  and 
the  Judges  in  every  State  shall  be  bound  thereby,  any 
Thing  in  the  Constitution  or  Laws  of  any  State  to  the 
Contrary  notwithstanding. 

The  Senators  and  Representatives  before  mentioned,  and 
the  Members  of  the  several  State  Legislatures,  and  all 
executive  and  judicial  Officers,  both  of  the  United  States 


150  APPENDIX 

and  of  the  several  States,  shall  be  bound  by  Oath  or  Affir- 
mation, to  support  this  Constitution ;  but  no  religious  Test 
shall  ever  be  required  as  a  Qualification  to  any  Office  or 
public  Trust  under  the  United  States. 


ARTICLE  VII 

The  Ratification  of  the  Conventions  of  nine  States,  shall 
be  sufficient  for  the  Establishment  of  this  Constitution  be- 
tween the  States  so  ratifying  the  same. 

Done  in  Convention  by  the  Unanimous  Consent  of  the 
States  present  the  Seventeenth  Day  of  September  in  the 
Year  of  our  Lord  ons  thousand  seven  hundred  and  Eighty 
seven  and  of  the  Independence  of  the  United  States  of 
America  the  Twelfth.  In  Witness  whereof  We  have  here- 
unto subscribed  our  Names, 

G°:  WASHINGTON— Presidt. 

and  deputy  from  Virginia 

Attest  WILLIAM  JACKSON,  Secretary 

New  Hampshire!  _  T° [IN         ^ 

(^NICHOLAS  GILMAN 

NATHANIEL  GORHAM 


WM.  SAML.  JOHNSON 
ROGER  SHERMAN 

New  York  .  .  ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


New  Jersey 


WIL  :  LIVINGSTON 
DAVID  BREARLEY 
WM.  PATERSON 
JONA:  DAYTON 


APPENDIX 


151 


Pennsylvania  i 


Delaware  • 


B.  FRANKLIN 
THOMAS  MIFFLIN 
ROBT.  MORRIS 
GEO.  CLYMER 
THOS.  FITZ  SIMONS 
JARED  INGERSOLL 
JAMES  WILSON 
Gouv  MORRIS 


GEO:  READ 

GUNNING  BEDFORD  jun 
JOHN  DICKINSON 
RICHARD  BASSETT 
JACO:  BROOM 


{JAMES  MCHENRT 
DAN  OP  ST  THOS.  JENIFEB 
DANL  CARROLL 

,,..    .  .    [JOHN  BLAIR — 
Virginia  j  JAMBS  MAMBON  Jr 


North  Carolina 


South  Carolina 


WM  :  BLOUNT 

RICHD.  DOBBS  SPAIGHT 

.Hu  WILLIAMSON 

J.   RUTLEDGB 

CHARLES  COTESWORTH  PINCKNEY 
CHARLES  PINCKNEY 
.PIERCE  BUTLER 


fWlLLIAM  FEW 

ABR  BALDWIN 


ARTICLES 

IN 

ADDITION  TO,  AND  AMENDMENT  OP 
THE 

CONSTITUTION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 
OF  AMEEICA1 


PROPOSED    BY    CONGRESS    AND    RATIFIED    BY    THE    LEGISLATURES 

OF  THE  SEVERAL   STATES,   PURSUANT  TO  THE  FIFTH 

ARTICLE  OF  THE  CONSTITUTION 


ARTICLE  I 

Congress  shall  make  no  law  respecting  an  establishment 
of  religion,  or  prohibiting  the  free  exercise  thereof;  or 
abridging  the  freedom  of  speech,  or  of  the  press;  or  the 
right  of  the  people  peaceably  to  assemble,  and  to  petition 
the  Government  for  a  redress  of  grievances. 


ARTICLE  II 

A  well  regulated  militia,  being  necessary  to  the  security 
of  a  free  State,  the  right  of  the  people  to  keep  and  bear 
arms,  shall  not  be  infringed. 

•The  first  ten  amendments  were  adopted  in  1791. 
152 


APPENDIX  153 


No  soldier  shall,  in  time  of  peace  be  quartered  in  any 
house,  without  the  consent  of  the  Owner,  nor  in  time  of  war, 
but  in  a  manner  to  be  prescribed  by  law. 

ARTICLE  IV 

The  right  of  the  people  to  be  secure  in  their  persons, 
houses,  papers,  and  effects,  against  unreasonable  searches 
and  seizures,  shall  not  be  violated,  and  no  "Warrants  shall 
issue,  but  upon  probable  cause,  supported  by  Oath  or  affir- 
mation, and  particularly  describing  the  place  to  be 
searched,  and  the  persons  or  things  to  be  seized. 

ARTICLE  V 

No  person  should  be  held  to  answer  for  a  capital,  or 
otherwise  infamous  crime,  unless  on  a  presentment  or  in- 
dictment of  a  Grand  Jury,  except  in  cases  arising  in  the 
land  or  naval  forces,  or  in  the  Militia,  when  in  actual  serv- 
ice in  the  time  of  War  or  public  danger;  nor  shall  any 
person  be  subject  for  the  same  offence  to  be  twice  put  in 
jeopardy  of  life  or  limb;  nor  shall  be  compelled  in  any 
Criminal  Case  to  be  a  witness  against  himself,  nor  be  de- 
prived of  life,  liberty,  or  property,  without  due  process 
of  law;  nor  shall  private  property  be  taken  for  public  use, 
without  just  compensation. 

ARTICLE  VI 

In  all  criminal  prosecutions,  the  accused  shall  enjoy  the 
right  to  a  speedy  and  public  trial,  by  an  impartial  jury 
of  the  State  and  district  wherein  the  crime  shall  have  been 


154  APPENDIX 

committed,  which  district  shall  have  been  previously  ascer. 
tained  by  law,  and  to  be  informed  of  the  nature  and  cause 
of  the  accusation;  to  be  confronted  with  the  witnesses 
against  him;  to  have  compulsory  process  for  obtaining 
witnesses  in  his  favor,  and  to  have  the  Assistance  of  Coun- 
sel for  his  defence. 

ARTICLE  VII 

In  suits  at  common  law,  where  the  value  in  controversy 
shall  exceed  twenty  dollars,  the  right  of  trial  by  jury  shall 
be  preserved,  and  no  fact  tried  by  a  jury  shall  be  other- 
wise re-examined  in  any  Court  of  the  United  States,  than 
according  to  the  rules  of  the  common  law. 

ARTICLE  VIII 

Excessive  bail  shall  not  be  required,  nor  excessive  fines 
imposed,  nor  cruel  and  unusual  punishments  inflicted. 

ARTICLE  IX 

The  enumeration  in  the  Constitution  of  certain  rights, 
shall  not  be  construed  to  deny  or  disparage  others  retained 
by  the  people. 

ARTICLE  X 

The  powers  not  delegated  to  the  United  States  by  the 
Constitution,  nor  prohibited  by  it  to  the  States,  are  reserved 
to  the  States  respectively,  or  to  the  people. 


ARTICLE  XI1 

The  Judicial  power  of  the  United  States  shall  not  be 
construed  to  extend  to  any  suit  in  law  or  equity,  corn- 
adopted  in  1798. 


APPENDIX  155 

menced  or  prosecuted  against  one  of  the  United  States  by 
Citizens  of  another  State,  or  by  Citizens  or  Subjects  of  any 
Foreign  State. 

ARTICLE  XII1 

The  Electors  shall  meet  in  their  respective  States,  and 
vote  by  ballot  for  President  and  Vice  President,  one  of 
whom,  at  least,  shall  not  be  an  inhabitant  of  the  same  State 
with  themselves ;  they  shall  name  in  their  ballots  the  person 
voted  for  as  President,  and  in  distinct  ballots  the  person 
voted  for  as  Vice  President,  and  they  shall  make  distinct 
lists  of  all  persons  voted  for  as  President,  and  of  all  per- 
sons voted  for  as  Vice  President,  and  of  the  number  of 
votes  for  each,  which  lists  they  shall  sign  and  certify,  and 
transmit  sealed  to  the  seat  of  the  government  of  the  United 
States,  directed  to  the  President  of  the  Senate ; — The  Presi- 
dent of  the  Senate  shall,  in  presence  of  the  Senate  and  House 
of  Eepresentatives,  open  all  the  certificates  and  the  votes 
shall  then  be  counted; — The  person  having  the  greatest 
number  of  votes  for  President,  shall  be  the  President,  if 
such  number  be  a  majority  of  the  whole  number  of  Elec- 
tors appointed ;  and  if  no  person  have  such  majority,  then 
from  the  persons  having  the  highest  numbers  not  exceeding 
three  on  the  list  of  those  voted  for  as  President,  the  House 
of  Eepresentatives  shall  choose  immediately,  by  ballot,  the 
President.  But  in  choosing  the  President,  the  votes  shall  be 
taken  by  States,  the  representation  from  each  State  having 
one  vote;  a  quorum  for  this  purpose  shall  consist  of  a 
member  or  members  from  two  thirds  of  the  States,  and  a 
majority  of  all  the  States  shall  be  necessary  to  a  choice. 
And  if  the  House  of  Eepresentatives  shall  not  choose  a 
President  whenever  the  right  of  choice  shall  devolve  upon 
them,  before  the  fourth  day  of  March  next  following,  then 
the  Vice  President  shall  act  as  President,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  death  or  other  constitutional  disability  of  the  President. 
•Adopted  in  1804. 


156  APPENDIX 

The  person  having  the  greatest  number  of  votes  as  Vice 
President,  shall  be  the  Vice  President,  if  such  number  be 
a  majority  of  the  whole  number  of  Electors  appointed,  and 
if  no  person  have  a  majority,  then  from  the  two  highest 
numbers  on  the  list,  the  Senate  shall  choose  the  Vice  Presi- 
dent; a  quorum  for  the  purpose  shall  consist  of  two  thirds 
of  the  whole  number  of  Senators,  and  a  majority  of  the 
whole  number  shall  be  necessary  to  a  choice.  But  no  person 
constitutionally  ineligible  to  the  office  of  President  shall 
be  eligible  to  that  of  Vice  President  of  the  United  States. 


ARTICLE  XIII1 

SECTION  1.  Neither  slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude, 
except  as  a  punishment  for  crime  whereof  the  party  shall 
have  been  duly  convicted,  shall  exist  within  the  United 
States,  or  any  place  subject  to  their  jurisdiction. 

SECTION  2.  Congress  shall  have  power  to  enforce  this 
article  by  appropriate  legislation. 


ARTICLE  XIV 

SECTION  1.  All  persons  born  or  naturalized  in  the 
United  States,  and  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  thereof,  are 
citizens  of  the  United  States  and  of  the  State  wherein  they 
reside.  No  State  shall  make  or  enforce  any  law  which  shall 
abridge  the  privileges  or  immunities  of  citizens  of  the 
United  States;  nor  shall  any  State  deprive  any  person  of 
life,  liberty,  or  property,  without  due  process  of  law;  nor 
deny  to  any  person  within  its  jurisdiction  the  equal  pro- 
tection of  the  laws. 

SECTION  2.  Representatives  shall  be  apportioned  among 
the  several  States  according  to  their  respective  numbers, 
counting  the  whole  number  of  persons  in  each  State,  ex- 
1  Adopted  in  1865.  »  Adopted  in  1868. 


APPENDIX  157 

eluding  Indians  not  taxed.  But  when  the  right  to  vote 
at  any  election  for  the  choice  of  electors  for  President  and 
Vice  President  of  the  United  States,  Representatives  in 
Congress,  the  Executive  and  Judicial  officers  of  a  State,  or 
the  members  of  the  Legislature  thereof,  is  denied  to  any 
of  the  male  inhabitants  of  such  State,  being  twenty-one 
years  of  age,  and  citizens  of  the  United  States,  or  in  any 
way  abridged,  except  for  participation  in  rebellion,  or  other 
crime,  the  basis  of  representation  therein  shall  be  reduced 
in  the  proportion  which  the  number  of  such  male  citizens 
shall  bear  to  the  whole  number  of  male  citizens  twenty-one 
years  of  age  in  such  State. 

SECTION  3.  No  person  shall  be  a  Senator  or  Represen- 
tative in  Congress,  or  elector  of  President  and  Vice  Presi- 
dent, or  hold  any  office,  civil  or  military,  under  the  United 
States,  or  under  any  States,  who,  having  previously  taken 
an  oath,  as  a  member  of  Congress,  or  as  an  officer  of  the 
United  States,  or  as  a  member  of  any  State  legislature,  or 
as  an  executive  or  judicial  officer  of  any  State,  to  support 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  shall  have  engaged 
in  insurrection  or  rebellion  against  the  same,  or  given  aid 
or  comfort  to  the  enemies  thereof.  But  Congress  may 
by  a  vote  of  two  thirds  of  each  House,  remove  such  dis- 
ability. 

SECTION  4.  The  validity  of  the  public  debt  of  the  United 
States,  authorized  by  law,  including  debts  incurred  for 
payment  of  pensions  and  bounties  for  services  in  suppress- 
ing insurrection  or  rebellion,  shall  not  be  questioned.  But 
neither  the  United  States  nor  any  State  shall  assume  or 
pay  any  debt  or  obligation  incurred  in  aid  of  insurrec- 
tion or  rebellion  against  the  United  States,  or  any  claim 
for  the  loss  of  emancipation  of  any  slave;  but  all  such 
debts,  obligations  and  claims  shall  be  held  illegal  and 
void. 

SECTION  5.  The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  en- 
force, by  appropriate  legislation,  the  provisions  of  this 
article. 


158  APPENDIX 

AETICLB  XV1 

SECTION  1.  The  right  of  citizens  of  the  United  States 
to  vote  shall  not  be  denied  or  abridged  by  the  United  States 
or  by  any  State  on  account  of  race,  color,  or  previous  con- 
dition of  servitude. 

SECTION  2.  The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  enforce 
this  article  by  appropriate  legislation. 

AETICLE  XVI a 

The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  lay  and  collect  taxes  on 
incomes  from  whatever  source  derived,  without  apportion- 
ment among  the  several  States,  and  without  regard  to  any 
census  or  enumeration. 


ARTICLE  XVII « 

The  Senate  of  the  United  States  shall  be  composed  of  tw« 
Senators  from  each  State,  elected  by  the  people  thereof,  for 
six  years ;  and  each  Senator  shall  have  one  vote.  The  elec- 
tors in  each  State  shall  have  the  qualifications  requisite  for 
electors  of  the  most  numerous  branch  of  the  State  legisla- 
tures. 

"When  vacancies  happen  in  the  representation  of  any  State 
in  the  Senate,  the  executive  authority  of  such  State  shall 
issue  writs  of  election  to  fill  such  vacancies :  Provided,  That 
the  legislature  of  any  State  may  empower  the  executive 
thereof  to  make  temporary  appointments  until  the  people  fill 
the  vacancies  by  election  as  the  legislature  may  direct. 

This  amendment  shall  not  be  so  construed  as  to  affect  the 
election  or  term  of  any  Senator  chosen  before  it  becomes 
valid  as  part  of  the  Constitution. 

1  Adopted  in  1870. 
•Adopted  in  1913. 


APPENDIX  159 

ARTICLE  XVIII  * 

SECTION  1.  After  one  year  from  the  ratification  of  .this 
article  the  manufacture,  sale  or  transportation  of  intoxi- 
cating liquors  within,  the  importation  thereof  into,  or  the 
exportation  thereof  from  the  United  States  on  all  territory 
subject  to  the  jurisdiction  thereof  for  beverage  purposes  is 
hereby  prohibited. 

SECTION  2.  The  Congress  and  several  states  shall  have 
concurrent  power  to  enforce  this  article  by  appropriate 
legislation. 

1  Adopted  in  1919. 


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